Who are The International Confederation for Business Advancement?
The ICFBA is an international community of business executives, who have become 'Accredited Partners' (APs) and operate from countries around the world.
Why are most APs in the UK?
Because this is where we started, and where we have been working together for over a decade in a number of cases.
But the ICFBA has only been registered since March 2004
Many APs have been working together in independent consultancy for many years and March 2004 is only the date when the relationship was formalised.
This 'corporate umbrella' means they can approach some of the more interesting and profitable projects which require more than one persons skills.
It also enables APs to have access to the projects from international bodies, such as the World Bank, who have a 'pre-qualification' process which can only be undertaken by a formally structured and registered entity.
What are these major projects?
ICFBA is registered with a number of government agencies and bodies such as The World Bank, The EU, The UN and The Inter-American Development Bank to receive their project tenders, and is pre-qualified to tender with those requiring pre-qualification as a condition of taking on projects.
With up to 200 projects a day being published, we have a broad criteria to whittle down the number we receive and tend to focus on those calling for training, consultancy or 'product delivery'. This reduces our list to 40 to 50 per day and with further sifting we aim to end up with 5 to 10 new projects each day for our APs to pursue.
5 to 10 new projects daily, how do you handle that much work?
We don't... Our APs will realistically only be awarded around one in ten of the projects they tender for and those are each handled by a team of APs who have chosen to be involved in that project.
Almost all the projects would be handled by a team of APs working together and sharing the income it generates.
A lot of potential, is that why you are recruiting?
Yes, it is. We see an awful lot more projects available out there and would like to see more going to our APs.
So what is your vision for the future?
To have ICFBA seen as the primary source of consultancy and assistance by the target market of our APs. Whilst providing our APs with more than sufficient work opportunities.
How are the projects actually done?
If a project is for training or consultancy, normally the APs would do that themselves.
If it is some sort of 'product delivery' then there may be a team of APs working together to run the contract, bringing together and coordinating the suppliers or manufacturers of the product .
This uses the APs management skills as they oversee and control the project from conception to delivery.
As the APs might bring together four or five similar companies on a single project, it normally means they do not allow those client companies to be in control of the project. Experience tells us that it is likely to 'fall apart' without our AP's effective management and control.