A new organisation has been set up to help create contract opportunities for women-owned businesses, it was announced today.
The Women’s Business Enterprise Council-UK (WBEC-UK) is the first major achievement of the government’s newly formed Women’s Enterprise Task Force.
Set up in February this year, the task force seeks to encourage female enterprise across the nation and help close the gap in female entrepreneurship between the US and UK.
WBEC-UK will be introduced to the business community on July 12 2007 and is set to link women’s businesses to corporate supply chains.
The organisation will marry the growing corporate and public sector demand for diverse supply chains with certified women-owned businesses, said female enterprise association and WBEC-UK partner Prowess.
According to Prowess, although the number of women-owned businesses in the UK has recently topped one million, women’s businesses currently access less than 5% of corporate and public procurement contracts, which is ‘severely stifling their growth’.
The organisation is based on a supplier diversity model that has been hugely successful in helping women-owned firms in the US to grow, and looks set to do the same in the UK.
Glenda Stone, co-chair of the Women’s Enterprise Task Force, said: “Encouraging corporate and public organisations to become more responsible in increasing their supplier diversity is a core priority of the task force.
“If the range of businesses supplying large organisations better reflected the customers and communities that these organisations serve, then we should see increased interest in sourcing successful female-owned businesses.
“This in turn drives greater business growth and job creation through women’s enterprise.”
Gwendolyn Turner of Pfizer, a founder member of WBEC-UK, added: “Having a diverse supply base, which reflects our market, increases our market share and shareholder value. It’s about levelling the playing field not making a special case.”
© Crimson Business Ltd. 2007
