Auckland IT developer QLBS.com expects to sign a joint venture early next year to supply its business assessment software to China's biggest SME support organization, the Beijing Innovation and Incubation Co. (BIIC).

BIIC provides supervision and consulting services to 46 incubators handling 1100 small and growing businesses involved in a wide range of high-technology areas including biotechnology, medicine, IT, telecommunications and the environment.

The company's senior project manager Tony Li, in Auckland this week to take the product back to Beijing for trials, said a deal with QLBS.com could be finalized as early as February.

QLBS.com general manager Margaret Mulqueen said that although it will be too early to estimate the value of the partnership, it would be "significant".

Mr. Li, a Massey University MBA graduate, said the government-backed BIIC acted as a facilitator to help businesses commercialise innovative technology and new ideas to grow the local and national economies.

"China is still developing and although we are getting close to international standards in technology and the sciences, we are behind," he said.

"Many students return home with new ideas after overseas study and the government gives financial and other support to grow their businesses."

"Incubators are an important part of China's growth strategy and there are more than 500 throughout the nation. Beijing has seen a rapid development in incubator systems in the past decade and we are now studying how to make them work better in the future."

Mr. Li said the QLBS.com software would be used initially to evaluate how well the BIIC's incubators were performing before moving nationwide to test all China's business growth systems. He said his company had been doing assessments manually and had found nothing worldwide which had come close to QLBS.com as an electronic replacement.

Ms. Mulqueen and her husband Steve Lewin launched QLBS.com two years ago after starting a business consultancy based on her experience in the education and health sector and Mr. Lewin's IT background and had broadened their services with the software as a business assessment system for SMEs.

QLBS.com is used domestically by Industry New Zealand and is being considered by the Institute of Management and the country's Economic Development Agencies. It is also being trialled in Canada, Iran, Singapore and the UK while talks have begun with the US National Business Incubators' Association.