Horizon Centre offers a quick and economical way to understand your current development services system and then assess some opportunities for service enhancement.  We use our extensive experience in the development services industry to minimize the time needed to get to solutions and next steps.  Given the economic situation, we will work with you to create a plan that fits your needs and your budget.  That's our commitment.

Basic Assessment Plan Includes:

 

1.	Orient the management team and other selected staff about the assessment process and expected results.
2.	Perform onsite interviews and/or focus groups with a cross-section of staff and key customers and a tour of facilities, technology, and processes.
3.	Review our findings and observations and create opportunities for staff to reach consensus on the direction of improvements.
4.	Prepare and assessment report summarizing the findings, key focus areas for improvement, and recommendations for follow-up actions.

OPTIONAL Add-On Assessment Services Include:

 

We strongly recommend that you consider the following add-on components that will make your “basic” assessment process more robust and comprehensive.

 

Cost-of-Service Study and Fee Analysis: In these tough economic times, it is important to understand and capture fees that represent the true cost-of-service.  Experience has shown that customers will pay reasonable fees if they represent the actual cost of providing the service and the fees they pay go back into services delivery capacity.  Building a solid fee strategy and structure prior to an eventual upturn in the economy is crucial to a stable financial future. 

 

Best Practices Comparison: Determine how your community fares against a list of best practice areas.  We explore the benefits of the best practices and related how they would benefit your development services process.

 

Online Staff Survey Process:  Get quick feedback about your staff’s perception of your process, ideas for improvement, and other thoughts they would like you to consider.

 

Online Customer Survey Process: Get feedback directly from your recent customers relating to their experience with your process.  Establish a baseline for future use with a performance measurement program.  The web-based survey provides a quick snapshot of customer satisfaction and results in summary in numerous areas, including staff service, process efficiency, and other key customer expectation areas. 

 

Elected Official Presentations:  Our specialty is briefing your elected officials about the assessment of your system and processes.  We provide credible overviews of customer challenges and opportunities for service enhancements.  We offer elected officials an often needed third-party perspective to build credibility for a future staff improvement effort.

 

We Help You Design and Implement

For those communities that already understand some of their key issues and customer expectations but bring solutions to common customer complaints and system service delivery issues.  We offer your community a state of the art operational design solution to create a process that is more integrated and seamless for your customers. 

Basic Operational Design Services Includes:

1.	Define integrated development services “one-stop” design basics to create a multi-faceted implementation of phone-in, walk-in and online service request workflows.
2.	Establish a customer “sits in one chair” philosophy to minimize customer run-around.
3.	Define a project-oriented processing approach to tailor for customer projects and expected results.
4.	Integrate project management and clearly defined staff roles and responsibilities.

 

OPTIONAL Add-On Design Services Include:

Performance Measurement Program: Horizon Centre will help your organization assemble a program that measures both statistically and subjectively how well your process performs at the key stages.  Measuring performance is crucial in order to understand if you are being successful from your customer’s perspective.  We look at both “public” and “private” time and accountability to establish indicators that are most requested by key customers.  We give you the background rationale for why individual measurements are important.  As a bonus, we help you focus on 4-5 key “dashboard” indicators for the overall system’s performance.

 

Online Customer Survey Process: We obtain follow-up feedback from recent customers relating to their experience with your enhanced process.  The web-based survey builds upon the baseline feedback of customer satisfaction and results in summary in numerous areas, including staff service, process efficiency, and other key customer expectation areas. 

 

Elected Official Presentations:  We continue to support your effort by briefing your elected officials about the design of your enhanced system and processes. We offer them an "gut check" about the possible future improvements.