Adoption of national projects’ outputs will contribute significantly to the task of meeting the Government’s 2005 deadline for local authority services to be 100% electronically delivered or supported. One of the WWB NP’s products, the Single Business Account, has been proposed as a ‘mandatory outcome’ for local authorities in the ODPM’s recent consultation paper on priority services.
The WWB NP products are grouped under four main headings:
- The Single Business Account toolkit
- The Single Business Account pilot
- The model website
- Research findings & best practice models
The SBA pilot will test aspects of the Single Business Account with one local authority (Rotherham MBC) and a group of local businesses. The pilot will take place between April and June 2004.
The model website comprises a set of research, knowledge, content and software tools that will help individual local authorities create a fully customised business area on their website. Where the authority has a CRM system, the web solutions provided are designed to interface with that system so that, for example, a business can access information (eg on its business rates account) by logging in to its Single Business Account on the local authority website.
Research findings & best practice models include a series of reports covering interactions between local authorities and businesses and how they are currently managed; the concept of ‘business account management’ within local authorities; current provision for business on local authority websites; and other areas which support the project outputs.
The full list of outputs from the Working With Business National Project:
- The Single Business Account toolkit
- A report and presentation explaining what the single business account is and its benefits to Local Authorities and businesses
- A checklist setting out the implications of implementing the SBA
- Process maps and documentation relating to 23 business processes identified by the project
- A report outlining aspects of the single business account that are to be delivered by WWB and those areas that are currently out of scope but which local authorities might want to develop and implement themselves
- Technical specification documents describing interfaces and integration points between a CRM system and a Single Business Account framework
- A ‘business description’ to enable registration of a business with the local authority
- A business category list which local authorities can use for classifying the businesses they deal with
- The Single Business Account pilot
- Specifications of the technical requirements around the Single Business Account and its integration into the CRM system
- An evaluation report on customer feedback derived from the pilot
- A case study on the pilot
- The model website
- A ‘baseline’ report on the current state of provision for business on all local authority sites in England
- Process maps and documentation relating to 23 business processes identified by the project
- Software which will enable a local authority to create a customised business area on their existing web site
- A fully functional ‘demonstrator’ of the generic website www.yourauthority.gov.uk/business
- A ‘business description’ to enable registration of a business with the local authority
- A business category list which local authorities can use for classifying the businesses they deal with
- An e-forms toolkit to enable a local authority to create their own e-forms for the business area of their website
- Examples of how to integrate material from external websites (eg Jobcentre Plus and Business Link) into the business area of a local authority website
- Research findings & best practice models
- interactions between local authorities and businesses and how they are currently managed
- the concept of ‘business account management’ within local authorities
- current provision for business on local authority websites
- a ‘touch point’ matrix setting out how the outputs of WWB NP relate to outputs of other National Projects
