EasyBiz
EasyBiz was funded by the Australian Commonwealth Government through the Regulation Reduction programme. EasyBiz assists small to medium business to meet all their local government compliance requirements. This is particularly challenging for start-ups. ScenarioBuilder was chosen by a consortium of six local government authorities (led by Whittlesea City Council) to provide the most intuitive support for these complex processes. This successful Pilot Project received $6.2m of further funding to extend across 32 Victorian Councils.
ScenarioBuilder® is unique in providing distributed content management to Process. ScenarioBuilder® lets authors use simple decision trees to generate web pages that guide people through complex processes. Enhanced with powerful form and rule creation capabilities, ScenarioBuilder® reduces compliance costs by making the right way, the easiest way for employees and citizens.
Challenge
Small businesses face a sea of paperwork with overwhelming demands to comply with government regulation. Globally, Governments understand the urgent need to reduce the cost of compliance. Governments must help small business understand their compliance obligations and then guide them effortlessly through the process to meet their local government compliance requirements. Until now, there has been a real gap in the toolset to achieve this. Projects have been highly customised to particular compliance contexts. The EasyBiz project proves that ScenarioBuilder® can be successfully deployed across 32 councils. EasyBiz chose ScenarioBuilder® to:
- Help educate small and home-based businesses to best meet their local government compliance requirements.
- Identify which set of application forms they need for specific planned business actions.
- Assist businesses complete the forms.
- Allow businesses to save partially completed forms in a secure area and complete them at a later time.
- Allow businesses to make payments associated with the submission of a form.
- Pre-populate forms from already captured information.
- Send form data to councils for processing in their back-end systems or allow users to print off a hard copy, with information encoded in a barcode and submit it manually.
Solution
ScenarioBuilder® is a well proven product that presents complex business processes, simply. It makes structured processes visible, accessible and repeatable. The EasyBiz project demonstrated ScenarioBuilder® can guide small businesses through the compliance process, verify their inputs and validate their responses to ensure that they meet local government compliance requirements. ScenarioBuilder® transforms a complex web of questions, answers and inputs (as in the planning process) into step-by-step paths. People can complete a process efficiently and correctly which lowers costs, improves quality and enhances morale.
ScenarioBuilder® is a flexible product with many different applications. The Victorian Department of Justice supports citizens to manage common disputes without litigation. Consumer Affairs use it to handle consumer complaints and disputes. The Judicial College uses it to guide judges through unfamiliar issues. ANZ and Esanda utilise it to guide customer service officers through loan-evaluation processes. Critically, all process support links to resources which are kept up-to-date in a central repository.
For the Council
Acumentum has built on the simplicity of the authoring and the intuitive process-support of ScenarioBuilder® to make it easy for Council staff to succeed in making complex and unfamiliar business tasks easier for people to complete. Now ScenarioBuilder® allows council staff to author forms (or rather applications) via a simple wizard style interface. The wizard offers a comprehensive array of elements/fields (e.g. text boxes, drop-lists, option buttons, checkboxes, richly formatted instructions - and many more), together with validation and user-friendly error messages. ScenarioBuilder® helps Council staff ensure that people know the right path through any Council process. People only have to deal with relevant information as ScenarioBuilder® uses data they have entered to tailor their path through the process so that there is less chance of confusion, the process is completed sooner and there is much less stress. Once the user has completed the process ScenarioBuilder® outputs the data to a pdf or XML file to be uploaded to the council for automatic entry into their backend systems.
For the End - User
When entering data into a form, people can save their work at any time and password protect it to resume later, or to share with others. Long and complex processes can be completed in small steps, allowing time to get appropriate supporting documentation, without losing information already entered.
Saved work, including any decisions they have made, can be shared with customer support staff or instantly communicated to other experts. ScenarioBuilder® presents appropriate compliance forms with guidance, checks and verification for filling in online and electronic submission (together with digital signature). Alternatively the user can complete online and print for signature and offline submission. In this case the system retains the electronic record to avoid data re-entry. Integration into selected backend systems is available for a number of transactional processes.
Using the ScenarioBuilder® system the organisation can connect to a Payment Gateway (using a Shopping Cart type metaphor) to ensure the end user can securely pay for any forms/transactions they have carried out. This may also require end user authentication so ScenarioBuilder® can validate Digital Signatures.
The user may then output the results of their interaction as a PDF, and ScenarioBuilder® has the ability to connect to a selected backend and transmit the user's form/data for processing as required. Finally, as well as the default behaviour council authors can create Form Templates. Once created these templates can be stored in a central library and used by all councils. If the Master Form Template changes (e.g. a shared piece of Legislation has been updated), all the templates that are derived from the master will change automatically to include the new Legislation. This dramatically reduces the amount of work for council authors, and ensures forms are synchronised.
Example - Planning Permit for an extension
In this example, a scenario is constructed that gathers information from the user about:
- Their requirements for an application for a planning permit to build an existing building or erection of an outbuilding.
- Their personal details.
The system:
- Guides the user through a decision tree to check they are entitled to make an application, and to help them fill out their required sections.
- Provides form fields and instructions to capture user's data.
- Pre-populates property details through an interrogation of the council's backend system via a web service.
- Provides a browse upload facility to append files to the application (e.g. a copy of the certificate of title).
- Provides rich text area (WYSIWYG editor) which allows the user to format their application e.g. Bold, Italics etc.
- Provides online payment facilities.
Results
ScenarioBuilder® can help an expert author decision trees in "scenarios" much faster than traditional methods. ScenarioBuilder® allows the most experienced to help the less experienced, as experts can communicate best practice knowledge to others to help them achieve their goals. EasyBiz allows business and citizens to access vital council resources, step-by-step guides and online applications. ScenarioBuilder® provides a seamless end-to-end workflow. Time and cost is reduced for everyone as paper-copy, face to face and phone communications are better supported. Users need only consider those regulations that apply to their circumstances. Councils greatly reduce their support costs and enhance their reputation for effective service delivery.
ScenarioBuilder® decision tree assists council staff to author a scenario with ease and allows quick navigation through the content managed system.
Simple authoring system has made it easy for non-technical users to create forms using a simple wizard style interface.
"…especially good for me as I am a late bloomer as far as the internet is concerned."
"I liked the aspect that you could go back and re-clarify the information in the last screen."
"The options/alternatives given were very easy to understand, especially by one who has never had to build a home or make an extension…"
