The meeting between CORPEI and the BDG Group was established to determine opportunities and share business experiences between Ecuador and the United Kingdom.

Marco Romero, Director of MX Marketing Consulting Services, Cynthia Mayer from CORPEI UK, and MIchael Mott, from the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Source:El Universo newspaper, Ecuador, March 2006

In many countries, exporters do not receive the kind of support offered to the UK exporters by UK Trade and Investment and options are therefore limited. The BDG Latin American project is being led by Micahel Mott, head of the business development group and the work is supported by Marco A. Romero, from MX Marketing Consulting Services who has been contracted to act as Latin American Advisor to the BDG.

Mexican wave: Cementing the Mexico connections for the BDG are back row, left to right, Jonathan Webber, head of International Trade of Birmingham Chamber; Karl Burrows, seconded to AWM from the foreign office; Marco A. Romero, MD of MX Marketing Consulting Services and Latin American advisor to the BDG, and Michael Mott, head of the Business Development Group (BDG), with, seated, Maria Luisa Gonzalez, left, Minister for economic Affairs - Mexican Embassy and Elena Espinoza, Commercial Counsellor Bancomext UK.

Source: Chamberlink newspaper, March 2006

Useful advice at your fingertips

BCIskills.com (http;//www.bciskills.com) is the new first point to callout about the services and products available from the skills department at Birmingham Chamber. A key feature of the site is the extensive links library with over 1,000 annotate links available and the "How To" guides that explain the many aspects of business including Finance, People Management, Business Strategy. Each guide comes in the form of a downloadable pdf file.

Developed by Marco Romero of MX Marketing Consulting Services Ltd in partnership with Michael Mott management and workforce development manager the site has been endorsed by David Draycott who is keen to promote the site across the region as a means of enabling more business skills development. Over the coming months sections are being added with links to articles on a sector specific basis. Please visit the site at www.bciskills,com and tell us what you think

Footnote ONLINE: Manager and Workforce development manager, MIchael Mott, rear, with MX Consulting MD Marco Romero, left and Birmingham Chamber Executive Director David Draycott. The website can be found at www.bciskills.com

Giving you the right tools for the job

Since its launch, the Chamber Skills Department's on-line resources have grown so fast that by the end on 2004 it had recorded over 6,000 users. In January alone the figures were showing a growth of 25% with over 1,500 new users accesing the Skills Zone and a total of 12,000 pages. Visitors to the site are increasing and with each new one the rating with web search engines goes up which means that the Skills Zone appears nearer and nearer the top of the list when a search is done. The Skills Zone, while primarily a local Birmingham and Solihull resource, has been accessed from all around the world with many users coming back and finding it to be a good and reliable source of management and development information. The site is managed in partnership with MX Marketing Consulting Services and plans are now being drawn up to both deliver and capture more information from users so teh site can be more interactive.

Developing the Business by Managing People

There has been a change in how business strategies and management development has been conducted in the last 20 years.
A variety of forces have affected how companies perform and how they view the environment. Phillip Kotler points out how some of these forces as a charging pressure:

• Rampant hyper-competition
• Power-shifting from companies to consumers
• Better informed and price-sensitive customers
• Brand loyalty is declinig

Birmingham and Solihull Chamber and Business Link have created the management development area dedicated to addressing the need of the business and service sectors to develop management skills, to increase the potential of managers to learn new abilities.

Marco Romero, who held senior management marketing positions in Mexico, explains how the group has created three areas for management development - Business Toolbox, The Learning Zone, and Managerial Assessment Proficiency.

BCISkills.com - A dedicated skills resoruce for all

In order to provide the highest level of skils development support to the SME business community in Birmingham and Solihull the Skills department has been working closely with MX Marketing Consulting Services, headed by Marco A. Romero and Araceli Morgan, to develop an on-line resource.

Following from the research conducted by Marco Romero and driven by the needs of various programme and initiatives currently taking place it was felt that it was vital to enable on-line support to as many businesses as possible.

While Birmingham and Solihull like to lead the way in this area we have actually waited to see what has gone on before Marco Romero, MD of MX Marketing Consulting Services carried out a benchmarking excercise of 21 Business Link Skills sites and we have learned much from that.