The Closed System has been conducting trial programs of ’How to Sustain your Business’ in Melbourne for the past three years.

These programs are proving an effective way for small and medium-sized business to access government funding. They are focused on addressing needs for developing such specific areas as - e-business, business planning, marketing, export sales etc.

How to’ Secure Your Business’ training program, addressing sustainable business management, provides twenty hours of face-to-face consulting for each business, two workshops and a comprehensive training manual for key managers in each business.

The Closed System’s brief was to provide a training and community-building program to teach business owners and managers to achieve greater sustainability.

Results from surveys and follow-on mentoring reviews substantiate and indicate growing momentum for:

• New employment
  
• Business growth
  
• Increased profits
  
• Productivity gains
  
• Work and life balance
  
• Positive environmental and social impacts

The trial stage and the overwhelmingly positive anecdotal and qualitative results need to now be supported by metrics that formally track financial, social and environmental returns on investment. These are planned in the next stages of SUSTAIN.