For the entrepreneurs and small business owners your library serves, the complex and often stop-and-start process of business planning just became more efficient with the newly-enhanced Gale Small Business Builder. Beginning April 5, the popular trio of DemographicsNow, Small Business Resource Center, and Gale LegalForms will be integrated into this resource for libraries subscribing to any of the three products, putting content into your customer’s business planning workflow.
See the Integration in Action
Startups and current business owners need access to a wide variety of supporting information and data as they move their operations through the business development lifecycle. And, they don’t often know the extent of the library’s resources. With Gale Small Business Builder, users will encounter up to nearly 400 highly-curated links to “Helpful Resources” that will inform and assist them in completing business- planning activities.
For example, when patrons are prompted to choose their business structure, they can link to a Small Business Resource Center article that details the pros and cons of common business formations. They can also link out to Gale LegalForms to create state-specific articles of organization or incorporation.
With this integration enhancement, Gale Small Business Builder provides meaningful and timely access to articles, tools, and forms at a patron’s point of need, saving them time and cognitive load, and reducing in-person library staff intervention.
Released July 2017, Gale Small Business Builder provides customers with an intuitive, engaging, guided experience by distilling entrepreneurial activities into five essential steps—Entrepreneur Profile, Business Ideation, Break-Even Analysis, Business Plans, and Financial Projects. Robust and proven financial templates and business frameworks like Lean Canvas and SWOT analysis are combined with a conversational approach that assumes no exposure to business planning to create a valuable tool that enables users to plan, start, or optimize a small business or nonprofit.
Here’s what reviewers are saying about Gale Small Business Builder:
“The Small Business Builder is an improvement over the myriad business plan wizards and templates available online. Users can easily turn small business ideas, plans, and finances into a coherent foundational document and continue to rely on the database as the business evolves.
With applications that are varied and full of potential, Gale Small Business Builder will be a welcome resource for undergraduates, instructors, and, above all, entrepreneurs at any stage of establishing a business…”
—Library Journal
“For public libraries, the product will enable librarians who may not be business specialists, themselves, to support business patrons with services that go beyond the reference materials they currently provide. For entrepreneurs, the product will provide support and tools they need at a critical time in the planning of the business.”
—Outsell
Gale Small Business Builder includes integrated access to:
Small Business Resource Center A comprehensive database covering all aspects of starting and operating a business, including accounting, finance, human resources, marketing, taxes. Includes over 1000 business plans, and more.
DemographicsNow: Business & People Connects users with tools and a wealth of highly-detailed demographic data that spans the entire United States, making it ideal for gaining consumer and market insights for opening or growing a business.
Gale LegalForms Provides access to thousands of authentic, state-specific legal forms relevant to starting or managing a new business while offering the most robust collection of legal information available.
Libraries that do not currently subscribe to Small Business Resource Center, DemographicsNow, or Gale LegalForms will continue to be able to access a limited number of static articles from Small Business Resource Center in the “Resources” section of each planning stage.
Be sure to check out our press release covering the integration.
Visit gale.com/integration, to request a trial to any of the integrated business and legal resources.
