Expanding firms have gotten by with Internet research, looking at government generated demographic statistics, maybe chat with some local recruiters and listen to their HR department. That's good enough, so let's do it, we're done now. That is what average companies do, on a good day. Selecting a new location is froth with opportunity and risk and understanding true labor and supply demand variables (e.g., skills, scalability, aptitude, attitude, psychographics, competitive costs, brand equity and especially the long-term view of the talent pipeline coming out of local and regional school systems) have to be taken more seriously than ever before.
Great companies-the industry leaders, the innovators, the one's that value sticky sustainable location decisions value and covet true business intelligence and benchmarking. These companies want on the ground intense empirical insight through several days in a community talking to local companies, riding the roads, experiencing the commute, touring the real estate and seeing the public/private sector partnership in action through dinners and luncheons with state and local authorities to see if their actions will advance or thwart company investments in the long run. Maybe a concerted effort to identify gaps in success and investigating how economic development incentives might mitigate risk could give the Board that last sense of certainty and tip the project into an acceptable internal rate of return (IRR) and return on capital employed (ROCE).
This best practice in conducting true on the ground community due diligence is what Cenlar did when they selected Tempe, Arizona after and exhaustive search process, and their success will speak for itself.
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Robert Hess
Executive Managing Director, GCS