Using an external firm was the right decision at that time for several reasons.
The component covering current activities for all BDC employees was already quite a burden. Being able to have access to additional data, expertise and knowledge to address internal requirements was, at that particular time, the right decision to make. The country had only just begun to come out of the pandemic, and it was going through a period of economic upheaval. At the BDC, we wanted to be in a position to properly understand what the future would be like for SMEs in Canada.