Streamline business interactions across Council
in one easy to use system
BizConnect365, a low code platform has been developed specifically for councils to engage with businesses across a broad range of services, in doing so creating streamlined processes, increased efficiencies and shorter approval times for permits.
The types of engagement Council has with local businesses covers a varying range of topics and usually includes multiple Council departments obtaining information from multiple systems. Tasks such as fielding business enquiries, marketing & events (sending out timely communications & event management), advocacy projects, grants, mentoring and satisfaction surveys can now all be managed in a single system, BizConnect365. Having direct access to relevant and timely information from a single system means quicker resolution times, streamlines processes, breaks down siloes between departments and allows for business enquiries to be dealt with quickly and efficiently.
BizConnect365 supports the Better Approvals for Business Program and is part of the State Governments regulatory reform agenda announced in November 2020, focusing on improving planning and other business approvals processed to support economic recovery by Local Government. Funding options are available for Councils looking to implement BizConnect365 under the Department of Finance & Treasury’s Regulatory Reform Program.
Economic Development
BizConnect365, seamlessly integrated with advanced public sector software like Permits solutions, empowers Councils to drive economic development by providing a robust, flexible business and stakeholder management system tailored to each community’s unique local conditions. This integration combines BizConnect365's stakeholder engagement capabilities with Permits’ streamlined permitting and licensing workflows, enabling Councils to efficiently manage business-related inquiries, ensure regulatory compliance, and accelerate permit processing. Additionally, BizConnect365 creates enhanced visibility into businesses operating within the Local Government Area (LGA), offering Councils a comprehensive view of local business activities, needs, and growth opportunities
By leveraging this integrated platform, Councils can centralise data management, reduce silos, and enhance collaboration across departments. The public sector software automates critical processes such as permit approvals, inspections, and compliance tracking, while BizConnect365 facilitates personalised communications, grant access support, emissions reduction initiatives, and real-time insights into the local business landscape. This synergy results in significantly reduced turnaround times for permit applications, fosters greater employment opportunities, enables businesses to access grants for increased viability, and drives positive business and social impacts. Ultimately, this integrated solution promotes sustainable economic growth, innovation, and transparency across the LGA, ensuring Councils can deliver efficient, community-focused services with a clear understanding of the businesses shaping their region.
Enquiry Management
Direct all enquiry types to BizConnect365, a central location for validating enquires, leveraging automation and reporting statistics
Applications & Permits
Track application and permit status updates from other internal system to BizConnect365. Create personalised communications and gain greater insights from initial enquiry to issuing of the permit and beyond.
Industry Events
Manage all types of events, ticketing, payments, personalised invitations, waitlisting, sponsorships, surveys, email and event analytics.
Co-working
Attract new businesses, support existing businesses, manage co-working spaces and building access easily and efficiently with BizConnect365.
Mobility
Responsible persons can easily engage with business while on the move with supported mobile devices, or at events to add or update important details while on the go.
Workflow Automation
Automate repeatable tasks and create efficiencies across the organisation, assists in meeting compliance obligations, reduces overall risk, creates agility, and increases overall customer satisfaction.
Integration
BizConnect365 ships with integration to many Council systems currently in use by most Councils, Info Pathway, payment gateways and SMS providers just to name a few.
Portals
Provide external parties an easy to use and secure web portal to view all historical interactions, forms, event details and update personal and company details.
Marketing & Event
Most Councils have added to their Marketing capabilities over time and tend to use multiple systems for specific tasks, for example sending of direct emails such as, emails, surveys, brochures usually take the form of creating a list or exporting a list from an existing system then uploading the list to Survey Monkey or the like to send out and gain insights using analytics, that can tend to be one dimensional.
Event ticketing and payments are usually carried out in systems such as Eventbrite, while attendance of events is generally carried out in Excel or similar. BizConnect365 built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, offers organisations of all sizes a single application to run all marketing activities from, and include ticketing payments with the added advantage of running campaigns against real data without the need for exporting to other systems. This brings with it enhanced analytics and the ability to reporting across various departments as data is available to those that need it.
BizConnect365 provides the opportunity to consolidate line of business applications, further creating efficiencies and streamline business engagements, saving time, and creating a more collaborative environment, creating a 360-degree view of all engagements across the organisation.
Realtime marketing
Allows you to orchestrate personalised journeys across all touchpoints to strengthen relationships.
Segmentation
A market segment is a collection of contacts that are targeted with a customer journey. In most cases, you'll choose who you want to target based on industry, demographic, firmographic, behavioural data, and other considerations.
Event budgeting & planning
Event management assists organisations with every facet of running an event, from event planning, budgeting and ongoing management, promotion and publication, attendee registration/waitlisting, webinars & analytics.
Marketing Forms
Marketing form is made from a collection of fields, buttons, graphical elements, and a few configuration settings. Each field included in your form is linked to an attribute in BizConnect365.
Surveys
Surveys provide an enterprise feedback management application you can use to easily keep track of the customer metrics that matter the most to your organisation.
Analytics
Marketing effectiveness can easily be reviewed with built in dashboards, metrics, views and insights across single or multiple journeys.
Integration
To provide timely and relevant information to businesses, integration to Council systems amongst third party providers are advantageous to assist business enquiries in a timely manner with the least amount of back and forth as possible. With the ability to span over multiple departments and systems, translates into quicker turn around times and increases productivity.
Infor Pathway
A Council application central to most councils, provides BizConnect365 with connectivity to application and property data.
Health Manager
Manages permits related to hospitality and provides visibility to application and permit data.
Service Victoria
A state Government portal for all Victorian service enquiries.
Payment gateways
Connect a payment gateway to process paid events and ticketing.
Australian Business Register
Or the ABR, validates the business name and status in BizConnect365.
Supply Nation
Validates Indigenous ownership of businesses in BizConnect365.
Records Management System
A seamless view of all information relating to a business including files located in such systems as TRIM.
SMS
Communicate to businesses more effectively, supports two-way messaging.
NetZero 2030
Councils play a vital role in spearheading efforts to reduce emissions by helping local businesses in reducing their carbon footprint by providing access to valuable resources, such as expert guidance and best practices for emissions reduction strategies and assisting in gaining access to Government grants. By doing so assists businesses navigate towards a greener and more sustainable future. BizConnect365 provides councils with a tool to store and analyse data provided by businesses to reduce C02 emissions and assist in local and global efforts to combat climate change while simultaneously promoting economic growth and innovation within your communities.
The BizConnect365 system provides councils with a tool to:
- Process automation reducing effort needed to onboard interested businesses in reducing emissions.
- Capturing baseline information of the current position of emissions.
- Assisting businesses to access available grants and historical information on applied and obtained grants over time.
- Calculating a business’s emissions and comparing cost benefits of energy-saving initiatives to help reduce overall operational costs.
- Logging of emissions to demonstrate usage trends, such as:
- Electricity consumption
- Water usage
- Gas consumption