Businesslink
Serco manages and operates businesslink.gov.uk, the Government's official website for business. The portal presents businesses with access to information and services across government, tailored to meet their specific needs.
The overall economic impact of the site on businesses is regularly assessed through independent surveys. In 2008-2009 more than £1bn of savings and benefits were identified.
The cost of the service including the Government's investment in transformations work is £35m pa.
The programme is on track to meet its forecasts and expects to help businesses achieve £4bn of annual savings and benefits by 2011.
As a private sector supplier we understand what businesses want and need and are able to tailor the service to deliver - increasing its usage, the benefit that it delivers and high levels of user satisfaction.
Serco's successful delivery is evidenced by the year on year growth in visits to the site. In 2008/09 visits numbered 14.8 million with numbers expected to grow by 50% to more than 19 million in 2009/10.
Businesslink.gov.uk has a customer satisfaction rating greater than 90% - more than 90% of businesses rating the services as good, very good or excellent. This is higher than most highly rated private sector sites (amazon.com, eBay etc).
Since December 2006, when Sir David Varney's "Service Transformation Report" recommended that the portal become the primary information and transactional channel for businesses, more and more business facing content and transactions, from a wide range of government websites, have been migrated on to the site.
Benefits to Government are in the form of efficiency savings through the reduction in the number of websites that need to be maintained and promoted. During 2008/09 the website more then doubled in size, with more than 4,500 pages of content and 30 transactions moved to businesslink.gov, including the Transport Office website. By March 2011, business facing content from 95% of Government websites will be available through businesslink.gov.uk.
As well as simplifying access to sources of Government advice and support, benefits to business include time and money savings as well as helping improve performance.
Through businesslink.gov.uk Serco is supporting Government to:
- Increase the use of online channels- by working across departments to move customers towards the online channel (where it meets their needs)
- Simplify access for businesses to Government support and advice by providing not only a single destination but also content that is relevant and meaningful
- Increase the levels of compliance through simplifying regulations and increasing awareness and understanding of government policy
- Businesslink.gov.uk is also particularly effective at stimulating cross-government working by engaging departments, agencies and business representative bodies in governance of the major themes on the website.