How San Luis, Arizona is building a more disciplined approach to economic development

With a three-person economic development team responsible for business attraction, retention and expansion, small business development, and downtown redevelopment, the City of San Luis, Arizona has to make every interaction count.

For Economic Development Director Armando Esparza, that means more than staying busy. It means creating a system that helps the team understand where its time is going, maintain continuity across competing priorities, identify businesses that need attention, and show the results of its work.

After nearly a decade working across regional, state, and small business economic development organizations, Esparza brought that perspective to San Luis.

“I think I’ve done almost everything in economic development, so I understand how important having a CRM and tracking metrics, success, red flags, how important it is.”

Today, San Luis uses Bludot across business retention and expansion, attraction, small business programming, and other economic development initiatives, giving the team a flexible foundation as its work continues to grow.

A small team managing a broad economic development portfolio

Local economic development is different from working at the state or regional level.

For Esparza, it is much more hands-on.

“At the local level, I think it’s more boots on the ground. We get to see the direct impact in our communities.”

That proximity also means the department touches a wide range of work.

San Luis supports industrial attraction, commercial development, BR&E, small business programs, and downtown redevelopment. With only three economic development staff members, priorities can shift quickly depending on what is happening in the community.

At the beginning of the year, the department might be heavily focused on a small business cohort. A few months later, commercial development could take priority. Then industrial prospects may require more attention.

The challenge is making sure everything else continues moving even when one area becomes the immediate focus.

“It’s all about making sure that the team keeps all the other priorities running and going at the same time while we’re focusing on one thing.”

Bludot gives the team a common place to keep that work organized rather than relying on what happens to be top of mind.

Connecting day-to-day activity to department goals

One of the ways San Luis has configured Bludot is around the department’s broader economic development goals.

Activities are organized into areas such as business retention and expansion and small business development and entrepreneurship. That gives Esparza a way to see how staff activity aligns with the priorities established for the department.

For him, that connection matters both for program management and for evaluating the work of the team.

“Those are the goals that I have for the department. So that’s mirrored in the activity areas that we’re focusing on because we want to make sure that we track our success in these areas.”

That structure is especially valuable in economic development, where much of the work happens through conversations, visits, introductions, follow-up, and other activities that can be difficult to quantify if they are not consistently recorded.

“If we don’t have the data to back up the work that we’re doing, I think it’s hard. We want to make sure that we are meeting the goals that we set for ourselves in the actual program activities.”

Rather than measuring activity for its own sake, San Luis is building a clearer record of the work behind its economic development strategy.

Using segmentation to follow businesses over time

San Luis also makes extensive use of tags in Bludot to organize businesses into meaningful groups.

The team can distinguish home-based businesses, identify participants in specific programs, and segment businesses based on the resources or initiatives connected to them.

That becomes particularly important for small business development.

For example, the City operates programming through its incubator and wants to understand what happens to participating businesses after the program ends.

“We do want to keep track of them over time to make sure that they are growing and they’re expanding.”

A business may enter a program while still in the idea stage. Over time, that entrepreneur could move into a physical storefront, launch a food truck, or reach another meaningful milestone.

By keeping those businesses segmented and connected to their history, the City can continue the relationship rather than losing visibility once a particular program is complete.

As Esparza explained:

“Tagging is important to keep the segments of your business.”

The same approach is being used for a six-week incubator program, where tags help the department track which classes each participating business has completed.

Turning BR&E visits into actionable follow-up

San Luis has also created a structured workflow for business retention and expansion visits.

Rather than simply logging that a meeting occurred, Esparza created a specific Bludot form for staff to use during BR&E outreach.

The goal is to capture what staff learn while recognizing that no two visits are the same.

Some conversations may last five minutes. Others may involve touring a facility, meeting employees, discussing workforce needs, or identifying a potential expansion.

To keep that information actionable, Esparza asks staff to pay particular attention to two signals: a potential expansion and a potential closure or loss of jobs.

He describes them simply as a green flag and a red flag.

“It’s important to know everything that they see. I think specifically I asked them to look out for two things. One is a potential expansion or a potential closure or loss of jobs.”

If neither appears, the business may simply be scheduled for another routine visit several months later.

When a flag does emerge, the next step changes.

An expansion might lead to follow-up around a future ribbon cutting or additional assistance. A warning sign can trigger a much more immediate response.

Esparza pointed to a large employer that was preparing to close. The City worked proactively on a job fair for affected employees and coordinated with Arizona@Work to explore resources that could help connect those workers with new employers.

“If either that green flag or that red flag was picked up in the visit, then that’s how we schedule next steps.”

That simple framework helps turn information gathered during BR&E conversations into concrete action.

Building continuity into local business programs

The City is also using Bludot to support community-facing initiatives such as its annual 928 Day promotion.

September is historically a slower month for businesses in San Luis because of the community’s agricultural economy and harvest cycle. The City created 928 Day to encourage residents to support local businesses through promotions and special offers during that slower period.

Bludot helps the team manage the operational work behind the initiative.

Businesses register through forms connected to their business records, allowing the City to track participation while also giving businesses an opportunity to update their information.

“We’re definitely using Bludot to track the visits, the people who sign up. We use the forms to have them register and tie it to the business directly.”

Because that information remains connected to each business, the team can see who participated previously and build on that history as the initiative grows from year to year.

One platform that can grow with the department

San Luis initially focused its use of Bludot on attraction and BR&E, but the team is already extending it into other parts of its economic development work.

Small business programming is one example. Downtown redevelopment is another.

Esparza plans to use projects to organize redevelopment efforts around specific buildings, while connecting meetings, businesses, property owners, and related activity to the work.

“We started off with easy tracking attraction and BR&E, but with all the functionalities I think that we will be doing the project-specific downtown redevelopment.”

That flexibility is particularly important for a department whose responsibilities stretch across so many different areas.

Instead of creating a separate process every time a new initiative begins, the team can adapt the same underlying system.

“Bludot is a tool, but you can really mold it to your needs.”

For San Luis, the result is not simply a better record of what has already happened. It is a more structured way to manage what happens next.

As the department grows, adds staff, expands its small business programming, and takes on more redevelopment work, that foundation gives the City a way to preserve knowledge, maintain consistent follow-up, and keep its economic development priorities moving together.

“The tool is really comprehensive and it can be used in any way that any department needs.”

To see how Bludot could help empower your economic development work, schedule a demo.