» Why BCS?

BCS offers a strong team of experts in the management of corporate and community engagement at local, national, regional and international levels. Its world-class consultants and researchers have worked in more than 50 countries in the developing world and emerging economies, as well as with a wide range of international organizations, including governments, United Nations agencies, the World Bank and its regional banks, USAID, universities, and non-governmental organizations. With experience across a wide range of industries, geographies and functions, BCS's solutions are always tailored to the needs and aspirations of each client, and to each cultural context to produce the best company- and industry-specific results.

» BCS’s teams have worked in:

» The BCS Approach

The BCS approach, developed by its founder Dr. Rani Parker, assists large businesses and communities to engage with each other in ways that are mutually reinforcing and that generate net benefits to both. Central to the BCS Approach in the Community-Company Assessment, CCA. The CCA identifies opportunities for building or strengthening company-community relationships.

BCS investigates company and community cultures through its use of an inductive methodology, which draws on different types of knowledge and experience. BCS incorporates the economic and social effects of globalization, such as electronic communications and diasporic links, through appraisal of local/global interactions. These links, in turn, inform interdependencies within and among communities and companies.

The product of the Community-Company Assessment is a set of options with potential points of intervention to build or strengthen company-community relationships. In conflict settings the CCA is particularly helpful to identify opportunities for peaceful engagement.

The central principle of BCS is that of engagement. BCS works closely with its clients, constructing a core team that includes representatives from the company, local government, localities and BCS. Each Community-Company Assessment is specifically designed to meet contextual considerations, and in each instance the strength of the analysis rests on the degree of inclusion. Thus, the CCA consults children, women and other marginalized groups, as well as local leaders and opinion shapers. BCS also helps implement actions and assess progress so that clients are fully guided to be demonstrably profitable and responsible - both for themselves and society.

» The BCS Approach will help a company:

• Add competitive edge through understanding of context and community
  
  
• Build brand value and foster customer loyalty
  
  
• Improve reputation among stakeholders
  
  
• Reduce opportunity costs and operating costs to manage risk more efficiently
  
  
• Attract and retain a quality workforce, increase morale and commitment
  
  
• Ensure long-term sustainability for itself and communities

In places where traditional forms of international aid have been largely ineffective, BCS’s Approach is especially successful for two reasons: (a) it rests on the principle of “respectful intervention,” so that the special expertise of the corporate sector can be harnessed, and (b) it taps into the deep understanding that local communities have of their own circumstances.