BDS is an area of ILO work that requires integration with other ILO pillars for supported enterprises to take off. Without an integrated approach, it is unlikely that trained individuals will be able to translate their knowledge into businesses or expand their existing businesses. To provide a holistic enterprise development support system, BDS needs to connect to many other interventions:

• Because employment services play an intermediary role between workers and employers, they are, out of necessity, integrated within wider employment and business development support. For job-seekers interested in self-employment rather than waged employment, referrals into BDS can help them develop business plans and related skills. For instance, in Uganda, rural employment services were run with employment and business development officers. This helped provide labour market information and guidance to refugee and host community entrepreneurs who were starting or interested in scaling up their businesses. It included referral into business training and business plan competitions.

• Connecting cooperatives and social and solidarity economy enterprises with BDS can help members improve social and economic objectives. MSME owners and entrepreneurs may also benefit from operating in a cooperative structure, which can support the pooling of resources and risk-sharing. A cooperative structure will also increase the willingness of service providers, including commercial banks, to service entrepreneurs who might fit into higher-risk categories.

• BDS should be operated alongside other programmatic areas that support a holistic enterprise development support system, notably access to finance and partnership with financial institutions that are able to serve refugees. Several countries sequenced SIYB and other BDS training with financial education and the provision of financial products.

• BDS can support value-chain development by helping actors along the value chain establish and scale up enterprises, often taking advantage of value addition. 

• BDS can also support construction contractors who are involved in employment intensive investment programmes (EIIP). Contractors involved in EIIP are local businesses, so they too can benefit from BDS to manage and scale up their operations. The ILO already supports contractor training from the perspective of increasing capacity to bid for EIIP contracts, but contractors can also benefit from BDS.

• As young people participating in Job Search Clubs (JSC) explore their own interests and capacities, they may find they are more suited to self-employment than waged employment, in which case having a pathway to other types of BDS is advantageous. 

Skills profiling tools help identify job-seekers whose skill sets are better suited to business development services. The link with SIYB can be particularly useful, because of the limited formal-sector job opportunities in the areas where PROSPECTS operates. In many cases, entrepreneurship serves as one of the few viable livelihood pathways for young refugees and host community members.