Communications officer at the Standford Seed Transformation Network, Ghana, Karen Evans Halms, has disclosed that entrepreneurs must improve on their modules to ensure their businesses have good corporate governance policies in order to access credit facility.

Speaking at this year’s annual flagship conference of the Network on the theme: ‘Transformation Continuum’, Karen Halms believes that accessing credit facilities could be much easier if the best practices are observed.

She explained that the entire concept of the transformation program is “to take businesses” that are growing to help them to scale up.

Describing the conference as a “transformation journey”, Karen Halms noted that the Network assesses problems facing businesses in the country, what is “hurting the various businesses” and resolves to see what they can bring on board to help them to scale up.

“We are just recovering from the COVID which impacted quite a number of the businesses. So, we are here to arm them with how to stabilize and them to reboot basically. And to help them to continue with the transformation journey we all are on”.
Karen Evans Halms

Fundamentally, the communications officer of the Standford Seed Network, revealed that another reason for the conference is businesses “access to funding”.

Businesses access to credit facility

According to Karen Halms, the reason the network is “focused” on helping businesses in the area of accessing credit facility is because after the business plan and “big ideas”, the entrepreneur needs to “actualize that plan”, which requires money.

“There are a lot of times you need to put some money behind the plan to make it work. We realized that a lot of the businesses are suffering from sometimes even readiness to even get the funding for those who are ready. So, we brought the stakeholders who have some funding available to help those businesses that are ready and prepared to access the funding. Before you get into funding, you have to be prepared. It doesn’t just happen. So, getting ready for the funding is a process. We help the businesses to prepare to receive the funding and when they are ready, we give them the access to those who are ready with the funding to support them”.
Karen Evans Halms

Prior to the conference, President of the Stanford Seed Transformation Network, Ghana, Linda Yaa Ampah, asserted that business transformation has become critical as entrepreneurs have been compelled by the COVID-19 pandemic to undertake fundamental and innovative changes in order to survive and be successful.

Mrs Ampah explained that as businesses, they have to accept that “transformation in systems, processes, models, people and technology among others are needed to achieve success”.

“We can’t continue to do things as we did in the past. STN Ghana is happy to create a platform for discussions and insights in transformation for us to learn as well as encourage ourselves through the networking opportunities to propel our businesses forward”.
Karen Evans Halms

The Network has over the years offered members a way to harness the power of the global Seed community by connecting online, in-person and events, with other like-minded business leaders whose industries or interests align with their own.