The Challenge
The pandemic severely affected small and medium-sized brick-and-mortar businesses. As part of the Stronger BC Economic Recovery Plan, B.C.'s Ministry of Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation launched the Launch Online Grant program to support these businesses. It provided funding to expand into e-commerce, stay operational, and grow market share.
Our Solution
In collaboration with our partner Alacrity, we advised and delivered the Launch Online Grant Program's service design, supporting the program in accepting applications which provided over $42 million in support grants. These funds enabled business owners to launch an online store within 12 weeks.
Button created a front-end website and online application platform using an Agile development approach. The build also included designing and implementing web pages with format validation and a secured Microsoft Azure database backend.
With security always a primary deliverable, Button helped the program achieve threat risk assessment and cloud guard rails compliance.
The Outcome
Through a rapid 4-week delivery from inception to launch, the program area received a world-class grant application website with a secure database.
It included a dashboard for applications, and customizable executive reporting, which offered transparency and validation for citizens and officials with oversight.
Security risks were managed and mitigated, and an ongoing post-launch support program helped to eliminate the program area's support costs.
The result; B.C.'s Ministry of Jobs, Economic Recovery and Innovation, our partner, and citizens with small and medium-sized businesses were all winners!