SIM, Senpa team up to offer free business skills course |29 August 2011

The Seychelles Institute of Management (SIM) has teamed up with the Small Enterprise Promotion Agency (Senpa) to launch a business course that will benefit practicing entrepreneurs, those who wish to open a small business or others who wish to get the knowledge for future use.

The overall aims of the course are to enable people to apply and use modern knowledge of the Seychelles small business sector, develop an ability to analyse and evaluate information relating to the sector.

It also aims to create awareness of the need for effective customer service within the small business sector, develop managerial and technical skills for small business managers and develop understanding of the ways in which regulation and legislation impact on an organisation and the sector in general.

The course will comprise 19 modules, with a wide variety of business-related topics, such as planning/managing a small business, basic book-keeping, cash flow forecast, costing and pricing, operations management, marketing skills, managing people in Seychelles, cash and credit control, procurement, capital budgeting, monitoring cash flow and business growth and sustainability.

The course will be taught in two ways – at certificate level, the course will run for 192 hours, where each session is a six-hour one – and also a simpler “How To” level, taught in Creole, where those following this simpler version will be able to choose the specific modules they want to follow.

Senpa small business training coordinator Alfred Brewster says there will be examinations held at the end of the certificate level course and the Seychelles Qualifications Authority has recognised the course and accredited it.
“The course – which will be run on Saturdays – is targeting mainly people who are thinking of starting a business or who are already in business,” he said.

“Although the How To level of the course is a simplified one, it is basically the same thing and has the same contents as the certificate course, although it is allowing people to make a choice of the modules they want as well as being offered lessons in Creole.”

Mr Brewster says the course is scheduled to be launched on September 7 and lessons will be 40% theory and 60% practical.
“This course is something new, and we are inviting a whole scope of different people to come and join it; it’s free and it is easy and will bring them many benefits,” he said.