At the General Castle Country Business Expansion and Retention meeting on February 2, Ethan Migliori and Nick Tatton presented a new concept in helping businesses get off the ground in the area.
One of the things that new businesses face is getting all the proper permits and requirements for local government put together and they also often have questions about many other things that various agencies in the area can answer for them. In the past, this all took a vast amount of time, and often referrals that were submitted for information had to go through some extensive channels before someone got back to a business operator or potential entrepreneur.
In the last year, Price City and USU Eastern have been working on an Internet based program to alleviate some of the problems posed by these processes. While the program is not up and running completely, they are asking that people go on the site and start to fill out information that will help them to tweak it and make it viable for people to use.
“What we are trying to do is set up an electronic kiosk for businesses,” said Migliori.
To do this they have enlisted the aid of Laith Wardi, of Executive Pulse, a consultant they have used before. Through a web meeting site Wardi showed those attending how the program is set up and how it can be used.
“This is meant to be a kind of matchmaker between government resources and businesses,” said Wardi.
He said as they get information entered from businesses it will fill out the program and they can continue to customize it for the areas local activity. Once the information is filled out businesses will be able to go in and request various government services. He said that under the present system the burden falls on the economic development people to make the referrals, but with this the system generates automatic information to the service provider. There is no need for any human intervention in the process. The system will then refer the information to the services person and it will also notify the business who they will be working with on those services.
From the services end the system allows agencies to add any provider to the system, in any capacity. Basic information can be put there and in addition the resources available there can be listed under that provider. The system will also allow for automatic resource response.
Migliori said that present there is no link to the state or the federal agencies that might need to be involved in a business startup, because the creators have been focused on local information at this time. He said that he thinks these things may be able to be added later. Right now, they are focusing on the local agencies and that they have been working on something that will bridge all local government’s needs.
One of the things that was demonstrated that was unique is that there are so many fields that don’t need to be filled out by a business. Wardi said, as he showed some of the forms on a screen to the audience, that creating it with fewer required fields is based on the fact that if people don’t have the information to fill in all the fields they often will either leave the site or they will put in incorrect information to get through the process. He said that not having so many required fields is actually a plus because when they are not filled in it shows the recipient of the information those deficiencies and then they can contact the business and ask valid questions to get that information.
Tatton said that the system is built to get the basic information from a business and the forms they fill out will act as valid information for such things as a business license application and other requirements.The theory of the process is to create a onetime capture, so things are not redundant from agency to agency.
Migliori said at this point they don’t know how every government entity will perceive the system so the initial idea was to start with two or three entities and create a framework that they can take to the other agencies so they can see how it will work.
“We think it will be a good resource for them,” said Migliori.
He said at present there is no payment process set up yet, but that that will probably come at a later date.
“Most of this has been developed within the existing budgets we have to work with,” said Migliori. “If we had a half million dollars we could probably have it complete today, but the lack of money to do it is making it a slower process. We are doing it in phases as the money comes along.”
For businesses and agencies that would like to get involved, the site has a hot link they can go to at https://www.executivepulse.net/castlecountryut/signup
The next BEAR Meeting will be held on Thursday, February 16 at 8:00 am till 9:00 am inside the Jennifer Leavitt Student Center on the campus of USU-Eastern. Guest speaker will be Robert Powell, an instructor at USU-Eastern, who will be speaking, along with some other guests, about Training the Trainers and how that can contribute to economic development in the area.