News by SB Informer

USA. Alabama first state to sign IBS Group agreement under Gulf Coast revitalization project

SB Informer
Tuesday, June 13, 2006; 02:41 AM

IBSG International, Inc. (OTCBB:IGII), a holding company for four technology and software subsidiaries, is proud to announce that its subsidiary, IBS Group, Inc.(IBSG Group), has initiated a Gulf Coast Revitalization Project in consideration of those states heavily impacted by last year's hurricanes, and with the approval of the US Small Business Administration's Disaster Recovery team. IBS Group will waive first year license fees, valued at $100,000 for each state participating, as their contribution to the Gulf Coast recovery effort.

Alabama is the first such state to sign a formal agreement with IBSG under the Revitalization Plan, and is expected to generate $6.9 million in revenues to be shared between the Alabama SBDC and IBSG over the life of the five-year agreement. Although no assurances can be given, management anticipates that during the first 12 months of operation, shared revenues based on a percentage of the estimated 86,000 businesses, according to the state of Alabama's statistics, is expected to exceed $700,000.

Hurricane Katrina has caused widespread devastation to the Gulf Coast states, displacing tens of thousands of small- and mid-sized businesses and over 100,000 employees. Those state Small Business Development Centers participating under the Project will utilize IBS Group's digital enterprise service center platform as the key tool to revitalize their small and mid-sized business communities.

"We are expecting that businesses damaged or displaced by Katrina will be incented to return to full operation through the use of the powerful services provided by BizWorldPro," said William Campbell Jr., State Director of Alabama's SBDC network, "and in fact we hope that it will also encourage other businesses to come to our state to share in the revitalized economic development opportunities." Mr. Campbell added, "We well appreciate IBSG's contribution in helping us rebuild our small business community. It gives us further assurance that we will rise above the damage and create a solid ground for the thousands of small businesses looking to thrive in our state."

"We are proud to be of assistance to Alabama and any other Gulf Coast state in helping them recover from this devastating storm," remarked Alan M. Shafer, Chief Operating Officer of IBSG, "and we will be providing them every resource at our disposal to move the project along quickly to bring back their business community and the jobs so necessary to that recovery."

Alabama joins a number of other states including Connecticut who are either installing or evaluating a BizWorldPro project for implementation this year in support of their SME business community. It is anticipated that a dozen or more states will be operational by yearend 2006, with over 100,000 small businesses subscribing. Taken together, these projects are expected to gross approximately $135 million over the next five years, to be shared between the state hosting organization and IBS Group.

Through the use of BizWorldPro's cutting-edge technology, outstanding functional application modules, superior support services, and a revenue generating model like nothing else available to the resource-constrained SBDC networks, they and other economic development organizations will be better able to meet their goals of increasing their economic impact metrics and touching more clients each year. The result will be a stronger economy within each state participating, and a stronger small business climate nationally for the 25 million small businesses recognized by the SBA as the backbone of the country's economic growth.

 Feedback   Submit Article