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Synchronist helps with Mississippi business retention efforts

TVA is working with the Mississippi Development Authority on an economic-development software program, the Synchronist Business Information System.

The Web-based software program is designed to promote the expansion and retention of existing businesses. It enables economic-development groups to determine how they can better help businesses expand and create jobs.

Synchronist includes an automated set of survey tools and 40 reports that issue marketing aids, warnings, and alerts at the click of a mouse. The software develops questions to ask company officials and puts the questions in a survey format. Once the survey’s results are input, the software generates a report that indicates whether the company is pleased, somewhat pleased, or in need of special attention. Synchronist calculates an objective assessment of a company in four areas: value to the community; growth potential; risk of leaving, downsizing, or expanding; and satisfaction in the community.

“We are pleased to partner with MDA to utilize this program,” says TVA Chairman Glenn McCullough Jr. “This software will help our local communities create more jobs for Mississippians by enabling our existing industries to grow and expand.”

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour introduced the Synchronist tool to area economic developers at a ceremony April 21 in Jackson, Miss. Amy Bunton, General Manager of Business and Financial Development for TVA Economic Development, represented TVA. Representatives from MDA, the Mississippi Manufacturers Association, Entergy, Mississippi Power, and local communities also attended.

“The retention and expansion of our existing businesses is an integral part of workforce development,” Barbour said. “The Synchronist system will allow MDA to better analyze community trends and provide services that will be most beneficial to the local community.” TVA has also worked with the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development and five counties in the upper Cumberland Plateau to use the Synchronist system to help create and retain jobs there.