Commerce City, Colorado Launches Business Retention and Expansion Program, Powered by Qwally Platform.
The Challenge
In the rapidly growing Commerce City, local businesses are crucial to economic prosperity but often struggle to access resources and navigate support structures. Despite a wealth of resources at the local, regional, and state levels, many businesses underutilize these opportunities, potentially stalling growth and innovation.
Stewart Meek, the Economic Development Local Business Manager at the City, recognizes these obstacles. “Job growth, wage growth, quality of life—all the things we care about are driven by existing businesses,” Meek noted. “It is common for these businesses to be unaware of the resources available to them.”
“As the City continues to grow, the need for modernized city government and processes becomes more prevalent to assist and provide for residents."
- Emily Whittington, Innovation Specialist
While the Economic Development Department was enhancing connections between businesses and resources, the City’s Center for Innovation (CFI) team was piloting initiatives to modernize city priorities. Emily Whittington, Innovation Specialist at Commerce City, emphasized the City's partnership with the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance (CSCA) to discover new solutions. “As the city continues to grow, the need for modernized city government and processes becomes more prevalent to assist and provide for residents,” Whittington stated.
The City needed a platform that would not only foster new business relationships but also modernize government engagement through an intuitive interface, streamlined processes, automated data collection, and more.
The Solution
In response, Commerce City developed the Elevate Commerce program using the Qwally Business Engagement Platform to establish more direct connections between the City's economic programs and local businesses. This initiative was designed to streamline the discovery and utilization of resources, ensuring a more effective and intuitive experience for businesses at every stage of growth.
“Qwally built our front door,” Meek explained. “I like to think that the door opens to reveal the information or resource a business needs to unlock the next stage of their success.”
Elevate Commerce, Powered by Qwally Business Engagement Platform, https://elevate.c3gov.com/
Qwally Platform helps achieve many of the City's goals:
- To centralize access to a broad range of resources, making them easily discoverable and accessible.
- To provide a seamless, modern digital interface that integrates smoothly with existing City operations.
- To ensure inclusivity, with bilingual support, reflecting the diverse business community in Commerce City.
- To generate leads for the new program, streamline interactions, and easily create new referrals.
“Our goal is to create a best-in-class, award-winning program, and Elevate Commerce— including the Qwally partnership—was built with that goal in mind."
- Stewart Meek, Economic Development Local Business Manager
“Our goal is to create a best-in-class, award-winning program, and Elevate Commerce— including the Qwally partnership—was built with that goal in mind,” Meek added. “We scanned the nation to identify the best elements of leading BRE programs and used that information as a launching point to create Elevate Commerce.”
Whittington noted, “It has been the goal of the City to modernize city government, and Qwally has truly benefited our Economic Development team as they develop a new Business Retention and Expansion (BRE) program.”
The Future
The launch of Elevate Commerce on April 17th was just the beginning of more innovative projects in Economic Development. “My ‘pie-in-the-sky’ goal is for Elevate Commerce to be the one-stop shop that connects businesses to everything they need to succeed,” Meek stated.
Visit Commerce City's Elevate Commerce program by visiting https://elevate.c3gov.com/, and stay tuned as we continue to follow up with the incredible team at Commerce City, CO, for program results in the coming months and years.
###
About Qwally
Qwally enables more wonderfully vibrant business communities through an approachable Business Engagement Platform. Qwally Platform scales help requests, referrals, navigation, and feedback from businesses, providing better, faster, and smarter business assistance.
To learn more about Qwally and their new business engagement platform, visit https://qwal.ly, follow them on LinkedIn, or subscribe to their newsletter.
