Accessing capital was next to impossible in the past for entrepreneur James Woodside, who recently received $112,500 in investment loans from the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) thanks to the assistance of the Access Accelerator / Small Business Development Centre (SBDC).
Woodside’s company Alvernia Business Consulting (ABC Bahamas Ltd.) provides information technology services to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Woodside attempted several times to secure funding to expand his business, which was started in 2003, but was unsuccessful.
“Accessing capital as a service-based company is next to impossible unless you already have funds or personal assets equaling in value to the amount requested,” Woodside said.
“Most banks that I’ve approached required 100 percent equity financing for business loans.”
Now that Woodside has been able to secure funding through RBC with the assistance of the SBDC, he will be able to grow his company.
ABC currently provides network design and implementation services, virtualization, private clouds, offsite backups, new office setups, office migrations, custom application deployments, software upgrades, computer lab repairs, point to point and point to multi-point wireless, internet protocol (IP) surveillance, IP telephony deployments, structured cabling, electronic document management, security assessments and business continuity planning.
“The technology company leads and assists with technical support, procurement and implementations,” according to a press release on the awarding of the funds.
“ABC Bahamas Ltd. reached out to Access Accelerator after seeing an ad on Facebook to further expand the company’s services.
“To better provide key technology for SMEs, the tech company needs to build its own infrastructure to implement the technology. With the funds accessed through the organization, ABC Bahamas Ltd. will bring new products to market.”
Woodside said he is grateful to have received the funding and is eager to further assist businesses with their technological endeavors.
“We want to ensure that both the client and our company continue to grow sustainably,” he said.
“The symbiotic approach is working and we have already seen how this approach is helping our clients expand into new areas.”
Woodside said it’s these partnerships that motivate him. “They inspire me – when the fruit of our services not only benefits Alvernia Business Consulting, but our nation.”
According to Woodside, the SBDC further assisted his company through constructive feedback, vetting and fine-tuning of his business plan.
“Sometimes when business owners like myself love what we do, we don’t take the time to ensure documentation and verification of our business strategy and processes,” Woodside said.
“Looking back, being assigned a business advisor was a double-edged sword but necessary. Assessing your business as a whole and documenting your long-term strategy was taxing and frustrating, but measuring 100 times to cut once is ultimately worth it.”
