I applaud the Metro Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) and its president Tim Sheehy for leading the charge in creating a benchmarking report that compares the Milwaukee metro area’s economy to that of 15 other American metro areas. The report highlights many positive attributes of metro Milwaukee’s business climate. We should be proud of the Milwaukee area’s wonderful quality of life, presence of corporate headquarters, reasonable commute times and strength in the performing arts. While the report also outlines many challenges that need to be addressed, I am optimistic that these challenges can be used to provide an “opportunity” roadmap for a renewed emphasis on economic development and rallying cry for a stronger business marketing initiative for southeast Wisconsin.
As the president of Forward Wisconsin, the state’s public-private business marketing group, I have reached out to leaders in the Milwaukee area, including our board member – Tim Sheehy – to begin discussions on how Forward Wisconsin can partner with metro Milwaukee as we promote the state for business growth. While marketing and promotion is just one piece of the puzzle, it is an important one and one that has not been adequately funded for many years at most levels of government. For example, according to a recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, “Cincinnati spends about $4 million per year on its economic campaign.” Forward Wisconsin’s total marketing budget for the State of Wisconsin is about $750,000, with $320,000 coming from the State and the balance from private sources. To his credit, Governor Doyle recognized this disparity soon after he took office and he has significantly increased support for more business marketing resources at the state and regional levels in his 2005-2007 budget.
One area that Forward Wisconsin has made a top priority is selling the state’s business climate on-line. A key part of this effort is promoting the metro Milwaukee area, other state metro areas and all the communities in Wisconsin on the Internet. It is widely cited that up to 80 percent of site location firms and businesses seeking new facilities do their initial site searches on-line. It became readily apparent to Forward Wisconsin that our state needed an extensive, easy-to-access on-line business portal containing a range of demographic, site, building and other critical information to begin to compete for attention of these key players in the site location business.
Realizing the critical part a website plays in retaining and attracting business investment, Forward Wisconsin decided to completely redesign our on-line presence at ForwardWI.com. For guidance in this overall effort, we looked to the International Economic Development Council (IEDC), the world’s leading association of real estate executives and site selection consultants, which had culled a list of over 1200 data points or “site selection standards” that their profession saw as vital for locating a new facility. Forward Wisconsin has adopted these standards in the redevelopment of our site.
Additionally, with a grant from the Wisconsin Department of Commerce and financial assistance from the state’s electric utilities and cooperatives, Forward Wisconsin also purchased the Location One Information System (LOIS) to provide the software platform that includes the IEDC site selection standards. The LOIS software, which seamlessly integrates state information along with community and regional economic development data into ForwardWI.com, has and will allow our new site to compete on a national and international basis. Most importantly, it allows business executives, brokers and site consultants to compare the resources, attributes and benefits of doing business in Wisconsin on an “apples to apples” basis with other states and regions.
Although we are still in the final stages of fully implementing all of the benefits of ForwardWI.com, our new site has already been recognized with an “excellence” award from the Mid-America Economic Development Council (MAEDC), an economic development professional membership organization that represents ten Midwest states, including Wisconsin.
The LOIS system already contains comprehensive demographic data at the state, metro and county levels. Forward Wisconsin’s ultimate goal is to have community profile information that meets the IEDC site selection standards available on-line for all Wisconsin metro areas and communities by this fall. For the Milwaukee metro area and other parts of the state, this means that the data needed by those making business expansion or relocation decisions can be accessed at ForwardWI.com, at state agency websites, or by a seamless link to or from a community and/or regional web site.
Best of all, the service is available free to Wisconsin communities and for those seeking businesses data. Our intent is to make ForwardWI.com and the LOIS software a resource for the whole State of Wisconsin so we can sell not only the business attributes of Milwaukee, but also the business attributes of every Wisconsin community and the entire state.
As with any other state, Wisconsin has issues and areas of commerce that need to be addressed. There are many initiatives underway by Governor Doyle all the way down to the local political and business levels to address them. The more optimistic tone is that Wisconsin has a tremendous number of assets and a very compelling story to tell relative to other states in the nation. Forward Wisconsin’s job is to open people’s eyes about the things going on in the state of Wisconsin. Our new and greatly improved web presence is a step in that direction.
–Pepi Randolph is President of Forward Wisconsin
