Business Grants Portal Phase 2 (Part 1)
What’s Cooking?
Back in Phase 1, Business Grants Portal (BGP) MVP focused on the portal’s foundation and the grant application process with a few selected grants. Click here to find out more.
In continuation, Phase 2 commenced shortly after Phase 1 (Dec 2014 to Sept 2017) ended. We have been painstakingly enhancing BGP and we are excited to share with you on the cool deets as well as some lessons learned. Look forward to new features like fraud risk assessment, a crowdsourced portal for consultant reviews and many more! :)
Since BGP’s launch, we have achieved:
- An increase in overall Customer Satisfaction Rating of 4.5 out of a 6-point scale
- Shorter grant application forms that have been reduced by 25% and allowing for faster application review of form-fields and auto-population of Company Information via ACRA integration
- A streamlined grants landscape by consolidating grants and sunsetting those that overlapped.
Ready for Phase 2? Let’s get to it!
Phase 2 Goodies
In Phase 2, the scope was designed to enhance service delivery to businesses, in order to increase the public sector’s productivity with 5 key features in place:
#1 Onboarding more grants for businesses
Due to global competition and technology disruption, businesses have to constantly adapt to dynamic conditions to stay competitive. This means greater financial support from the government over a wider range of sectors and industries. As a result, the new Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) was brought on to support businesses better. The PSG grant currently covers sector-specific solutions in retail, food, logistics, precision engineering, wholesale and landscaping industries. We are also looking forward to onboard two more new grants. They will be rolled out by the end of Phase 2.
#2 Seamless end-to-end grant process
In Phase 1, we focused on the grant submission process. It starts when the applicant first applies for a grant and ends with an approval or rejection of the application by the processing agency. In Phase 2, development covers post-application procedures such as change requests and claims reimbursement for a seamless end-to-end grant application experience without the need to rely on external means such as a system or manual documents to process claim submissions.
#3 WOGAA and Ask Jamie
As part of the SG Tech Stack initiative, BGP has integrated 2 of the common digital services for a more seamless, consistent and connected user experience.
Whole-of-Government Application Analytics (WOGAA) is a web analytics tool that monitors all Government websites and digital services automatically and in real time based on user interactions with BGP. The user behavior data and metrics collected will help agencies to improve and formulate strategies for enhancements.
On top of that, if you’ve recently visited our website, you will spot a cute robot sitting neatly at the bottom right of the web page. “Ask Jamie” is the government’s virtual assistant. It serves as a reliable first-point-of-contact for businesses on basic inquiries pertaining to grant applications. This is to ensure that basic needs can be addressed instantly without having to send an email and wait for a response.
#4 Data analytics for better decision making
As more and more transactions are made in BGP, data analytics capabilities can help businesses and agencies make more informed decisions efficiently. Features such as rule-based automation of submission process, fraud risk assessment to identify odd cases (launched in November 2018) and analysis of policy insights, will greatly help for effective utilization of grant monies and better decision making.
#5 GovReview
One of the challenges of business collaborations is to identify solution providers that provide quality products and services. Evaluating and performing background checks on 3rd party consultants engaged in the grant submissions also consume a sizeable amount of time for grant officers.
GovReview is our solution to ameliorate the mentioned challenge. It is a platform where we crowdsource reviews and ratings on these solution-providers, from customers who had benefited from using their products and services via BGP. More info to be released when it’s ready, so watch this space!
Future Works
BGP has grown so much since it started and has become an inspiration to other projects we are doing here. Will there be a Phase 3? Yes, there will be! We have a lot of exciting things lined up — UI revamps, new types of grant offerings as well as innovative add-ons that will enhance and form the whole of the BGP ecosystem. So wait for it! If you have any comments or inputs to share, drop us a note :)
Interested to find out the challenges encountered and how we overcome them? Check out part 2 of our Business Grants Portal Phase 2 journey.
Psst, if you like what you just read and believe in the work that we are doing for the public good, good news. We are ALWAYS on a lookout for talents who have a burning desire to make a positive impact via cool and useful technologies. If that’s you, hit me up via Linkedin!
