State launches Business Portal to connect Massachusetts firms — child-care providers to get dedicated navigators

The Executive Office of Economic Development on Friday demonstrated a new online Business Portal intended to connect Massachusetts businesses with state programs, direct points of contact and help with applications. Naomi Berlim, a staff member in the Executive Office of Economic Development, said the portal is a minimum-viable product and the team is seeking user feedback.

The portal is designed to streamline discovery of state programs and to match businesses with a single “navigator” who curates recommendations of programs, contacts and next steps. “We will do our best to respond within one week,” Berlim said, describing a question function that routes users’ regulatory and certification questions to the appropriate state staff for follow-up.

Why it matters: small businesses and child-care providers often face difficulty identifying which state resources apply to their needs and whom to contact. The portal aims to reduce that friction by collecting basic business details, matching businesses to a navigator and surfacing targeted funding, training and technical-assistance options.

What the portal does: presenters showed that users create an account and provide basic fields — business name, industry, number of employees and status (starting or established). The portal then returns curated resource recommendations and contact information, and it includes an application center that links to available programs or routes users to program pages. Berlim highlighted sample offerings users might receive, including a state small-business capital fund referred to in the presentation as “Business Power,” a training reimbursement program that can cover up to $15,000 per calendar year, free energy assessments and referrals to workforce- and real-estate-related state services.

Child-care and early education navigation: Berlim and Gabi Goldstein, manager of employer partnerships in the Department of Economic Development, said businesses operating in early education and care will be paired with members of the Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) team. The presenters said that pairing gives child-care providers a single point of contact who is familiar with programs available to that sector and can help interpret licensing and certification requirements.

Public questions and accessibility: a child-care provider identified as Celina asked whether the navigator could help determine whether a business requires EEC certifications. Berlim said yes, and offered to follow up directly: she left her email in the meeting chat and invited users to submit questions through the portal’s question function. The presenters also said the portal and navigator services will offer translation for documents and calls and that staff expect to reply to routed questions within about one week.

Next steps and feedback: presenters described this launch as an initial release and encouraged attendees to create accounts, try the portal and submit feedback via a follow-up survey. They said the team will iterate on the tool over time and shared plans to publish the session recording and Portuguese-language slides for participants who attended in that language.

No formal actions were taken at the meeting; the session was a product demonstration and public Q&A.