What's Inside:
- Latest Covid-19 Resource Updates
- Encountering Innovation this month!
- What is Business Continuity?
- Client Shout Out
- Upcoming Training Events
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Key 2021 Covid Financial Support Programs |
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Loan and grant program highlights include:
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Employee Retention Tax Credits - Up to $28k per employee refunded back to employer. Employers can claim up to 70% of total compensation expense per employee (up to $7k per employee per quarter in 2021).
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LAST CHANCE - ENDING THIS MONTH: SBA Debt Relief Program -New SBA Loans now through September 2021 get their first 3 months of payments FREE (capped at $9,000 per month per borrower) made on your behalf. Existing SBA Loans may get additional months of FREE payments as well, based on additional criteria.
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Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) - Small businesses and non-profit organizations can borrow up to a maximum loan amount of $500,000 and can come back and request more through the end of 2021 if they borrowed less than their maximum previously thru the SBA EIDL program.
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Encountering Innovation 2021 |
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Virtual Conference | September 13th - 17th, 2021 |
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Encountering Innovation is an annual conference brought to you by the Kansas SBDC Tech Innovation Center. It provides innovators the opportunity to present and showcase their technology to tech scouts and the public.
This year's virtual conference is from September 13th through the 17th.
Tech Scouts from the Department of Defense, Service Labs, Academia, and various government agencies will listen to pitches, discuss government needs, and provide specific next best steps for innovators.
From meeting the innovators to networking with Department of Defense technology scouts, the 2021 Encountering Innovation Conference will provide you the chance to experience all of this and more in a single virtual platform.
The week will include:
- Daily main stage speakers to discuss current and future technologies
- Multiple daily breakout sessions focusing on up-and-coming technology led by industry experts
- Direct contact with all innovators and technologies through the expo hall
The event will occur on the Accelevents platform.
September 11th is the last day to secure your ticket!
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Covid-19, tornadoes, floods, supplier disruptions, and other problems have shown us the value of having a plan for when things don't go right. Business Continuity planning is the process of developing strategies for averting, weathering, and recovering from a disaster or crisis to protect a business’s employees, operations, and key assets.
A plan can be as simple as making sure you have a Plan B supplier for when you run out of an ingredient or part needed for your best-selling product or as complex as ensuring all your customer data is backed up and accessible & you have a plan to shift production to an alternate location when your main site is destroyed or inoperable.
Continuity planning helps to identify potential threats, identify measures to prevent or minimize threats, or when those measures are not possible, describe steps needed for the business to recover.
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Essential steps for business continuity include:
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Identify your support team: Who are the people in your company that can help shift operations and solve problems in a crisis? Include them in your continuity plan and give them a role to play in the recovery plan.
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Know the legal requirements: Knowing legal requirements and compliance issues for your industry will make planning easier. Businesses in the healthcare and financial sector, as well as ones that perform government contracting, are subject to continuity planning requirements. Even if you are not in one of these industries, there may be contractual expectations that your business has a continuity plan.
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Identify what needs to be protected: Does your business have employees? Do you carry inventory or other important physical assets? Do you have data that needs to be safeguarded? What are the functions without which your business cannot continue to exist? Who performs them? Where are they performed? What needs to be in place in order for them to operate?
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Run through different scenarios: Consider possible crisis or disaster scenarios that your business could conceivably need to thwart or recover from, ranging from human acts to weather events.
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Mitigate risk: What can be done to prevent your business from experiencing a crisis situation? Things like password security, multiple data back-ups, supply chain and vendor alternatives, accessibility for employees to work remotely, evacuation plans, etc.
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Create a communication plan: Who are the key people (employees, customers, vendors, stakeholders) with whom you would need to communicate and in what order?
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Plan critical operations: How are you going to get essential functions up and running as quickly as possible? How long will it take? What operations can be put aside temporarily to keep more critical functions operating?
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Keep your plan up to date: As your company evolves, as key employees turnover, as contractual obligations or industry expectations change, as new potential risks develop, etc., your plans will need to be updated.
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Kansas SBDC Client Shout Out
Tech Commercialization | Precision Microwave
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Precision Microwave is a veteran-owned medical technology start-up based in Manhattan, Kansas. Founded in 2017 following successful completion of a Nation Science Foundation I-Corps program where the founding team interviewed over 120 physicians, nurses, hospital administrators, and others to study the clinical needs and pain points of existing MWA (microwave ablation) systems.
President Austin Pfannenstiel completed his doctorate in electrical and computer engineering from Kansas State University and is currently a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy Reserve.
Precision Microwave is refining the technology that started as research originally conducted at Kansas State University so that it can be commercialized and help a wider range of patients.
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Researchers at Precision Microwave have developed the next generation of microwave ablation technology to improve the flexibility and control doctors need to treat more patients. The directional MWA device is non-toxic, low-cost, minimally invasive, and offers surgeons greater control while reducing potential damage to surrounding tissue.
Through working with tech coaches from the Kansas SBDC at Washburn University, Pfannenstiel was able to pitch his medical technology to scouts from federal government agencies in the 2019 Encountering Innovation Conference sponsored by the Kansas SBDC and become a part of the scouts’ socialization process. That is when tech scouts share information about the business’s innovation with interested parties at government agencies and offer contacts and/or advice to help the business move forward. Pfannenstiel was also able to talk with advisors about his upcoming SBIR application and related topics such as demonstrating adequate capitalization.
Precision Microwave was also awarded SBIR and STTR grants through the U.S. Small Business Administration to support the research and development of innovations that have potential commercial success. Precision Microwave was recently awarded a nearly $750,000 from the SBIR Phase II grant. The Phase II grants will be used to continue the development of making the technology more commercially viable.
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Upcoming Webinars and Virtual Events |
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Funded in part through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration |
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Kansas Small Business Development Center
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Questions? Don't hesitate to contact our 7 day-a-week assistance line at (800) 949-7661
For Spanish, call (800) 707-0580
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