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Birmingham City Council

Birmingham City Council is the metropolitan borough council for the City of Birmingham in England. It is the most populated local authority in the United Kingdom (excluding counties) with, following a reorganisation of boundaries in June 2004, 120 Birmingham City councillors representing over one million people, in 40 wards. The council headquarters are based at the Council House in the city centre. The council is responsible for running nearly all local services, with the exception of those run by joint boards. The provision of certain services has in recent years been devolved to several council constituencies, which each have a constituency committee made up of councillors from that district.

Brief

We were commissioned by Birmingham Interaction (a branch of Birmingham City Council) to design and develop a technology platform that would create a critical mass of creatives and other industries (Visual Arts, Crafts, Design, Multimedia alongside healthcare, manufacturing and transport organisations). This would be achieved by providing a selection of functions, features and tools to encourage and promote business opportunities between the industries within Birmingham and the West Midlands.

Objectives

  • Produce a web portal to stimulate and encourage business growth within the creative quarter of Birmingham 
  • Enable community engagement and discussion within the target audiences Allow new business and sale opportunities 
  • To provide insight and intelligence about visitor traffic to the website 
  • Build the platform within the specified timescale and budget

Solution

  • We worked with Birmingham City Council (BCC) to understand the specialist needs of the project in the Birmingham and West Midlands area 
  • We then developed a strategy proposal and feasibility study that involved industry specific features and functionality 
  • All of the content within the website was fully manageable via a comprehensive CMS allowing the client to update content and activate/deactivate website functionality at will 
  • The portal allowed local creative businesses to register and then engage in discussion forums, post news about themselves, update their own dedicated profile page as well as apply for tenders 
  • The portal enabled local businesses to register and then engage in discussion forums, post news about themselves and post tender opportunities 
  • BCC were also able to login, mediate and administer all content and users on the portal as well as obtain specific MIS data and web analytics 
  • The entire solution was developed as a bespoke application for the client by a dedicated development team over a period of 6 months and was hosted on a dedicated hosting solution that we designed and commissioned and configured

Results

  • The result was a highly secure and market-leading presence on the Internet that offered functionality rarely attempted by any council or Government office 
  • The website experienced over 3,500 registrations within the first month alone from small business and freelancers in the Birmingham area 
  • The project was deemed successful by the EU funding body and launched at a major conference hosted by the council