Location : Islamabad.
Country : Pakistan
Positions :1
Position: Business Analyst
Job Type : Short Term Technical Assistance (STTA)
Start Date : November 01, 2019
Short Term - Business Analyst
USAID Small and Medium Enterprise Activity (SMEA) is a five-year project that is supporting Pakistan in SME-led economic growth that will help create jobs, foster entrepreneurship, and contribute to an increased GDP. As a part of the United States Government’s long-term commitment to helping Pakistanis secure a more prosperous future by increasing household incomes and employment, nurturing competitive small and medium enterprises, expanding trade and investment and creating more rewarding business opportunities, SMEA is working towards improving the enabling environment for private sector-led growth.
USAID SMEA plans to announce two new solicitations to seek grant applications for its two types of funding streams i.e SME Growth Grants and Innovation Grants (Solve the Challenge). The grant opportunities are for the SMEs functioning in the SMEA target sectors which includes, ICT, Hospitality, Agribusiness and Processing, Textile (minus spinning), Light Engineering, Logistics and Women Led Businesses (any sector). The innovations and solutions facilitated through the CF grants helps SMEs enhance their competitiveness and result in increased jobs, sales, exports, adoption of technology and new practices, access to finance, access to markets and improved performance of women-led enterprises
USAID SMEA’s Challenge Fund (CF) has a portfolio of grants that supports innovators who are trying to solve challenges and scale solutions. As part of CF program, SMEA seeks short term professional consultancy services of a qualified business analyst specialized in reviewing the business sense of the potential grants applications related to the SMEA target sectors and provide comprehensive evaluation to the Challenge Fund team.
Responsibilities:
Under the given assignment, the expert will be responsible for performing each task / activity related to the assignment as directed by the Challenge Fund team lead and/or his designee. All the activities performed by the expert must be in line with the awarded contract and scope of work. The expert will perform the activity by keeping in view the business protocols/scope and quality parameters defined in the contract as per Chemonics policies. The expert will be responsible to furnish filled scoring sheets for each grant under review within the allocated time.
1. Specific Tasks of the Consultants:
The specific tasks under this consultancy include;
- The expert should be willing to sign-off the Non-Disclosure Certificate (NDC) to protect and uphold the confidentiality and should have a functional understanding to make the necessary declaration of Conflict of Interest (COI).
- Conduct a desktop review of the grant applications to assess its business sense and viability of the solutions proposed.
- Provide detailed comments on the proposed grant activities for individual grant application and assign reasonable scores as per the predefined technical evaluation criteria established in the RFA document.
- Participate in grants evaluation meeting amongst the evaluation panel members consisting of technical sectoral experts and financial expert for essential deliberation on the evaluations and finalize the score.
- Submit the finalized scoring sheets to CF team for needful consolidations and ranking.
2. Job Qualifications
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Person Specifications
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Level of Effort
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- Bachelors/Master’s degree in Business Administration/ Economics/ any other relevant field to Business Management
- At least 10 years of business model analysis experience preferably with SMEs and within the approved target Sector.
- Excellent oral and written English language skills
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No. Positions: 1
35 days, cumulative for the two rounds of evaluation per type of grant i-e SME Growth and Innovation Grants.
Level of effort is estimated on review of approx. 03 grant application in a working hour.
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3. Duty Station:
The consultant is expected attend the grants technical evaluation meetings organized in Islamabad, however, the desktop review of grant applications can be done remotely.
4. Workspace and Use of Personal Laptop and Software(s):
The experts will be required to use his/her own personal laptop. Thus, he/she must certify that all software used is genuine and licensed.
5. Reporting:
The expert will report to the Challenge Fund Manager or any other designated staff. He / She will work closely with relevant members of the SMEA CF team.
6. Duration of the Assignment:
This assignment is planned to take place as per a start date of on or around November 01, 2019 and end date of on or around May 31, 2020.
7. Deliverables:
Grant evaluation and scoring sheets filled for each grant application under review. The timeline for the review process will be discussed and agreed with the CF team and experts.