Competitiveness Enhancement Specialist

Competitiveness Enhancement Specialist (Islamabad Office)

Chemonics International Inc.

Chemonics International seeks a Competitiveness Enhancement Specialist for its USAID Small and Medium Enterprises Activity (SMEA). Pakistan SMEA is a 5-year, $35 million project aimed at improvement of financial and operating performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Pakistan in selected high-performing industrial, manufacturing and services sectors.

Competitiveness Enhancement:

The Specialist will assist individual and group of SMEs in multiple sectors to identify, design and develop interventions to address key business hampering challenges within the sector at collective and at individual basis. The CE Specialist will act as a process manager to identify the possible set of bottlenecks, opportunities and capacities that exists at the 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 SMEs .

Responsibilities:

• Design and develop the assigned sectors development hypothesis and focus, business model with financials, implementation work plan and budget. 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 gap analysis through a consultation process to identify the set of BD services which can help the sector grow. Also develop the cost-value and return on investment (ROI) analysis to calculate financial impact of investment. All of the projects interventions are meant to result in increase in sales, jobs and exports for target SMEs.
• Conduct value chain mapping exercise identify the most appropriate areas, players, sub-sector(s) and develop a comparative analysis matrix for each value chain to select SMEs having financial and operation capacities to acquire BD services.
• Develop, coordinate and record day-to-day field work activities e.g. marketing and promotional activities, liaison 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 SME clients and BD service providers to strengthen the outreach and to achieve the project targets.
• Improve access of BD services into assigned sector(s) through advising, assisting and promoting SMEs and work closely with BDSPs to address the required services within a sector. 
• Assist the women entrepreneur’s specialist to design and develop a separate working methodology for women owned businesses and support them through matchmaking with relevant BDSP(s).
• 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. 
• Identify and collaborate 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 SMEs
• Design and manage the contractual relationship between BDSPs and SMEs which is complaint with the projects policies.
• The specialist is responsible to achieve monthly, quarterly and annual targets of under the below given categories to achieve and accomplish project’s goals and objectives;
• No. of SME support cases
• Enrollment/ registration of BDSPs
• Project management of approved cases for timely completion
• Drafting and finalizing biweekly, quarters and annual reports along with any other reporting requirements
• Project marketing event(s)
• Training events/seminars/workshops
• MoUs, Strategic alliances, collaborations with stakeholders.
• Support cross cutting project activities related to competitive enhancement, challenge fund and business enabling environment work plans.
• Develop exit strategy for the assigned sector and identify the appropriate stakeholders to hand over the project technical assets, publications, success stories and database after project closure.

• Develop Scope of Work (SOW), Request for Proposal (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.
• Any other special assignments/ tasks assigned by the COP/CE component lead or his designee.

Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in business, economics, developed or a related field
• At least 5 years of experience working; preferably in the development sector or with USAID funded economic growth projects
• Experience working directly with Small and Medium enterprises in any industrial or service sectors is necessary with an understanding of their challenges and the sector ecosystem
• Knowledge of the types of business development services available in the market, especially those relevant to SME growth is seen as a strong advantage
• Experience working with Women Led Businesses is seen as an added advantage
• Must have excellent written and oral communication skills since reporting and report writing is an essential part of the job