Business Lens Platform | EBRD’s Women in Business Programmes| Frankfurt School

Thematic Area:	Digital Financial Solutions
Duration:	2016 – ongoing
Client:	European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)
Region:	Europe, MENA and Turkey, Caucasus & Central Asia
Country Coverage:	Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, Morocco, North Macedonia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey and Ukraine

Project Overview

The EBRD Women in Business (WiB) Programme aims to promote women’s entrepreneurship by improving women’s access to finance, business know-how, non-financial business development services and to promote a strong, women-led small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector in its 20 countries of operation. Business Lens, a web-based platform for women entrepreneurs, is an important element to conduct online self-assessments on their businesses and provide information about international best practices and other important insights related to the WiB Programme.

The Women in Business programme is offered in more than 18 countries (EBRD 2020)

Frankfurt School experts have developed a unique platform for EBRD, which offers a tailored online self-assessment tool (Business Lens) that highlights the strengths and opportunities within women entrepreneurs’ businesses – and then matches the entrepreneurs with the WiB Programme activities offered in their country.

Through a detailed questionnaire, the Business Lens tool provides a score in seven key areas: financial management and performance, market knowledge, marketing and sales, human resources, strategy and organisation, risk management and operations.

The Business Lens score provides an indication of the overall management of the business and offers two tailored reports to women entrepreneurs: one identifies best practices in each of the seven areas while the other helps first-time loan applicants.

EBRD 2020

Business Lens also provides information on international best practices and guides women entrepreneurs in each of seven areas of the tool. The online platform is available in 20 countries of EBRD operations. The tool is accessible in the local languages in addition to English and has already helped more than 7,000 women entrepreneurs to diagnose their businesses.