For organizations serving small businesses
Organizational engagement
Business Tech Lab partners with organizations that already educate, advise, fund, or otherwise support small business owners but do not have the internal technical capacity to implement the systems those businesses need.
These organizations often help entrepreneurs understand what their businesses need and why it matters. Business Tech Lab closes the implementation gap between that understanding and a working system the business owner can actually use.
Business Operating Profile™
The BOP creates structured context around how that particular business operates, whom it serves, how customers move through it, what infrastructure already exists, where opportunities are being lost, and what the owner is realistically prepared to operate.
That context informs implementation. Rather than giving every business the same technology package, Business Tech Lab uses a standardized discovery and delivery methodology to determine and configure the appropriate systems around each business.
Implementation
Depending on identified needs, implementation may include website infrastructure, CRM, lead capture, email and follow-up, social visibility systems, customer communication, automation, AI-supported workflows, or better use of technology the business already has.
The BOP creates structured context around how that particular business operates, whom it serves, how customers move through it, what infrastructure already exists, where opportunities are being lost, and what the owner is realistically prepared to operate.
Business Tech Lab uses a standardized discovery and delivery methodology to determine and configure the appropriate systems around each business.
Business owners are enabled to understand and operate what has been built so that the organization's investment continues creating value after the program or funding period ends.
Enablement
The engagement does not end when technology is deployed. Business owners are enabled to understand and operate what has been built so that the organization's investment continues creating value after the program or funding period ends.
The organization gains more than completed technology projects. It receives structured visibility into participant needs, documented interventions, implementation progress, and measurable patterns across the cohort that can strengthen program design and reporting.
The organization brings the businesses, business-development programming, and desired outcomes. Business Tech Lab provides the bridge from identified need to implemented, usable technology.
Evidence
Business Tech Lab is a contracted service provider for the Philadelphia Department of Commerce and works with LA21 CDC in small-business advising, capacity building, and technology implementation. It also contributes to the Philly Biz Hub working group, including work related to training entrepreneurs on how to start a business in Philadelphia.
The Scale Up Your Business Podcast is produced in partnership with LA21 CDC. Founder Zakia Ringgold is a certified GrowthWheel advisor and has produced more than one hundred virtual events, including leading the transition of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association's conference to a fully virtual experience in May 2020.
Business Tech Lab is entering a period of significant cohort-based delivery through organizational partnerships. Existing contracts, active programs, and partner pipelines represent a path to serving well over 100 small businesses during the next twelve months.
The conversation
There is nothing to purchase on this page, and that is deliberate. Every organization arrives with a different cohort, a different funding cycle, and a different definition of what the program has to produce.
So the first step is a conversation about what you are accountable for. Roughly 45 minutes, at no cost.
Useful to bring, if you have it
how many businesses, what stage they are at, what the program is funded to achieve, when it runs, and what your last technology component taught you.
What you will leave with: a clear view of what would help, what it would take, and whether Business Tech Lab is the right partner for it.