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QUALIFICATION:- Bachelor’s degree in business, economics, development or a related field, Masters preferred

RELEVANT EXPERIENCE:-

  • At least 5 to 7 years of experience working with owned small and medium enterprises; preferably with donor funded projects and for women owned businesses
  • Awareness and knowledge of the challenges faced by female owned business and by women in the workforce in general
  • Demonstrated experience of helping small female owned businesses grow highly desirable
  • Excellent report writing and communication skills in English are mandatory for this position since report writing and developing technical briefs and write-ups will be a regular feature of this position.

POSITION DESCRIPTION

USAID Small and Medium Enterprise Activity (SMEA)’s development hypothesis is that SME-led economic growth will result in poverty reduction, job creation, and entrepreneurship development contributing to increased GDP.  SMEA will increase incomes and employment in project-assisted economic sectors and improve the enabling environment for private sector led growth in Pakistan. This activity will contribute to achieving USAID/Pakistan’s “Development Objective: “Improving economic status of focus populations.”. 

SMEA will achieve the following objectives and sub-objectives:

Objective 1: Improved Business Enabling Environment (BEE)

  • Improved Government of Pakistan (GOP) ability to develop and implement reforms of policies, laws and regulations
  • Strengthened private sector and civil society engagement in policy-making

Objective 2: Improved economic performance of focus enterprises

  • Improved economic performance in select sectors
  • Improved technological readiness and innovation
  • Increased access to markets
  • Increased access to finance
  • Enabled women SMEs run profitable business

Sub-objective 3.2.2B: Improved technological readiness and innovations (Challenge Fund)

  • Technical assistance to ICT firms to develop and market new technologies to enhance competitiveness in selected sectors
  • Creation and diffusion of innovative, sustainable, and scalable ICT and business solutions to improve the competitiveness of Pakistani SMEs
  • Collaboration between industry and academia addressing supply side constraints in terms of trained labor
  • Commercialization of ICT research
  • Increased technology literacy

SMEA is currently focusing on the following manufacturing, industrial and service sectors:

      I.        Information, communication and technology (ICT)

     II.        Light engineering

    III.        Textile (minus spinning)

    IV.        Logistics

     V.        Hospitality

    VI.        Agri Business and Processing

I. Position Title:- Women Owned Enterprise Specialist

Women Owned Enterprise Specialist will assist individual and group of women SMEs from any sector to identify and develop most appropriate, viable and logical initiatives to address key productivity issues within the sector at collective and individual firm levels. The specialist will act as a process manager to identify the possible set of bottlenecks, opportunities and capacities that exist on demand and supply sides, and how the project can assist the identified issues by providing workable and logical facilitation in terms of strategy development, capacity building, business development services integration, marketing and business development to support women SME clients into assigned sector(s). 

II. Objective and specific tasks. 

The specialist will be responsible to manage the women led enterprises from across Pakistan by designing and executing a comprehensive working strategy, business model with financials and technical analysis of women owned businesses to identify and address the key factors affecting/contributing behind the low productivity and less profitability of women SMEs. The women enterprise specialist will be responsible to support the position’s supervisor, sector specialists and fellow project colleagues in the successful implementation of all aspects of the project’s work plan and achievement of the project objective.

Specific tasks: As directed by the Competitiveness Enhancement Lead, the supervisor for this position, or by the Chief of Party or the Chief of Party‘s designee, the individual holding this position shall perform and support the performance of the following specific tasks:

  • Design and develop working strategy, business model with financials, implementation work plan and budget for the women enterprises. The work plan, budget and strategy should reflect the overall requirements of anticipated activities.
  • Design and develop sector and sub-sector operational and financial analysis to assess the return on investment (ROI) and to analyze the opportunity cost of sector based investments.
  • Conduct Business Development Services (BDS) gap analysis through a robust consultation process to identify and develop “most appropriate and doable” set of BDS for women led enterprises that are either common for enterprises irrespective of sectors or are sector specific. Also develop the cost-value and return on investment (ROI) analysis to calculate financial impact of investment and to prioritize most suitable sectors to work with women led enterprises.
  • Provide facilitation to sector specialists while conducting value chain mapping exercise, identify the most appropriate areas, players, sub-sector(s) and develop a comparative analysis matrix for each sector based on women led enterprises presence.
  • Develop. Coordinate and record day-to-day field work activities e.g. marketing and promotional activities, liaising with sector stakeholders, individual meetings, presentation, and potential areas of working within the sector to achieve assigned targets.
  • The specialist will be responsible for raising awareness, knowledge and compatibility of potential women SME clients to achieve the project targets.
  • Improve access of BDS through advising, assisting and promoting women SMEs and work closely with sector specialists to address the required services within a sector.
  • Assist the Training Specialist through identifying the potential areas of capacity building and trainings to strengthen the capacity of women SMEs (clients) to become more competent and efficient in business practices.
  • Assist the access to finance specialist through identifying the potential opportunities related to financial needs in the sector and work with program beneficiaries to identify and facilitate access to finance opportunities.
  • Establish strong relationships and work closely with the network partners e.g. academia, associations, business chambers and clubs, community clubs and government to strengthen the business development and programmatic activities within the sector. 
  • Facilitate the sector specialists during the identification and collaboration activities with potential BDS providers, consultants and training institutes at national and international level to increase the program outreach and to link these service providers with women SMEs.
  • Liaise with communication department and sector specialists to facilitate the process of   innovative and effective marketing, product and service improvisation initiatives to support the Competitiveness Enhancement (CE) component.
  • Facilitate and assist the matching process between BD service providers and SMEs to achieve the project goals and objectives.
  • Facilitate the overall processing of women SMEs support cases by assisting technical team(s) and at later stage assist them to present support cases in front of appraisal panel/committee for approval and disbursement of grant.
  • The women enterprise specialist will be responsible to achieve monthly, quarterly and annual targets in the below given categories to achieve and accomplish project’s goals and objectives;
    • No. of support cases
    • Project management of approved cases for timely completion
    • Project marketing event(s)
    • Training events/seminars/workshops
    • MoUs, Strategic alliances, collaborations with stakeholders.
  • Support cross cutting project activities related to competitive enhancement fund, challenge fund and business enabling environment work plans (if required).
  • Develop exit strategy for the assigned sectors and identify the appropriate stakeholders to hand over the project technical assets, publications, success stories and database after project closure.
  • All component actions and activities as may be added to the USAID SMEA Project work plan from time to time.
  • Assist in implementing the strategic direction, work plan and resource(technical assistance, training, commodity and other) allocations necessary for the timely and successful completion of the USAID SMEA Project work plan tasks and the achievement of component goals and objectives.
  • Ensure that the scheduling, budgeting, technical and documentary attributes of women enterprise development component are fully upto date in the USAID SMEA Project work plan, including but not limited to updates no less frequently than weekly
  • Any other special assignments/ tasks assigned by the COP/CE component lead or his designee.
  • Assist in developing reports, presentations, and any other information gathering/ analysis that may be required by supervisor, COP, or AOR.
  • Develop Scope of Work (SOW), Request for Quotation (RFQ), and Request for Proposal (RFP) and Technical Purchase Action Request (TPAR) for specific work plan activities.
  • Ensure close inter-component and inter-office communication, coordination and cooperation with other project components and sub-components.
  • Ensure that the technical work of all local and expatriate consultants fielded under the component and ensure that all end-of-assignment deliverables and other consultant and subcontractor performance results are a) consistent with and compliant with the consultant’s scope of work, b) are of high technical quality and good overall readability, and c) are acceptable to USAID and other component counterparts and beneficiaries
  • Ensure the ethical and professional transparency during assisting the BDSPs and SMEs to promote and assure fair and clean competition and selection.

III. Position Classification. Long-Term Local Professional Staff, located in Islamabad, Pakistan

IV. Estimated Duration of Assignment. Duration of SMEA contract.

V. Ultimate Authority and Chain of Command.  Ultimate day to day field supervision and authority for all project personnel and all aspects of project activities rests with the Chief of Party or his/her designee, and in the home office, with the project management unit (PMU) Director.  The individual holding this position shall take no managerial or technical direction from any individual who is not formally employed in the chain of command between the individual and the Chief of Party, the Chief of Party’s designee, or the PMU Director.                                                                                                                                                    

VI. Reporting Responsibilities. For all routine responsibilities and duties, either directly or indirectly related to this position description, the individual holding this position shall report directly to, and be supervised by, the CE Component Lead, or his/her designee.