Improve the City of Boulder Division of Housing’s ability to receive, review, verify, approve, and store resident applications for permanently affordable Homeownership Programs within the City.
The Division of Housing, Homeownership Program, is responsible for receiving, reviewing, verifying, approving, and storing all applications for permanently affordable Homeownership Programs within the city of Boulder.
The Homeownership Program application process is lengthy (oftentimes several weeks, at least) and requires significant documentation to verify income, assets, and other program requirements for those who wish to purchase a permanently affordable home. Currently, there is a manual paper application, resulting in packets ranging from 50 to 300 pages. Applicants also need to provide upwards of 50 supplementary documents with their application. With the lengthy documentation required for the application submission, the Program needs to streamline the application process.
• Limited ability to quickly address applicant questions about the application or process, or address their unique needs
• Incomplete application submissions require time consuming back-and-forth between applicants and staff
The Housing Division has worked with the city’s Innovation and Technology Department to attempt to address these pain points using a publicly accessible, Formstack-based structure. However, there are key limitations to this approach, including:
• Limited ability to toggle back and forth between application sections, especially uploading documents, saving, and then returning to them. This is made more complex by encrypted files.
• Inability to secure and therefore process Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments through Formstack
We are looking for an online, publicly accessible but properly secured, application submission solution that will help make both applicant and reviewer roles in the application process more user-friendly and ultimately helping achieve the primary outcome – quickly approving suitable applicants for the affordable Homeownership Program. Key requirements of such a solution include:
– Ability for applicant to save inputted information and attached documentation, and come back later to resume submission
– Ability for applicant’s basic information to be stored long term so that they do not have to re-input fields during recertification every 6 months
• Application Logic: User-friendly, informative, and smart/dynamic interface that requires certain fields and upload boxes depending on previous answers
• Security of sensitive personal identifying information (PII) data such as social security numbers and bank account information
– Ability for data to be automatically transferred to our Access database (Housing Access Link, [HAL])
– Ability for data to be transferred into fillable PDF formats for sharing with our sister agencies (This Communities, Boulder County Down Payment Assistance Program, and City of Longmont Homeownership Program) who we share a common application with to streamline the end user’s access to similar programs
• Payment Engine: Ability to include credit card and ACH payment method at end of application before submittal allowed
• Information Publishing: Ability for City staff to arrange the organization of the document submittals, (i.e. all combined into one PDF with bookmarks for different sections)
• Status Alerting: Ability for applicants to receive status updates or actively check status of application after submission
We’re an on-demand global marketplace that brings people and meeting spaces together. Users can instantly find, compare and book meeting spaces no matter where they are in the world.
In addition, it allows venues – from hotels to serviced office centres – to attract a wider pool of new customers, increasing occupancy and booking revenues.
The idea started back in 2011 when I was consulting small and medium-sized businesses and corporates on how to optimise their office footprints. Then at an industry conference I met my business partner, Richard Smith, as we were both speaking on the same panel.
After the panel discussion was over, he leaned over to me and said, “we need to talk.” Then five months later, I moved across the pond to join forces with Smith to build MeetingRooms.com.
Walk into any Starbucks and look around at all the laptops and people having meetings. Technology has given us the freedom to work anywhere, anytime and and there is no longer a need for an expensive permanent office because today’s work is in the cloud and on-demand.
But while it’s great that technology gives business owners and workers so much flexibility of when, how and where we work; sometimes we do need a physical space (for team catch-ups, client meetings etc.) and that’s where we step in.
I was partner in a firm that consulted small and medium-sized enterprises and corporates on how to optimise their office footprints. Prior to joining forces with Richard Smith, I co-founded a small tech start-up to make offices and meeting rooms bookable online.
No, I used to want to play professional football in the NFL. But I left UNI to start a small business after learning first-hand from a friend who had his own distribution company. He introduced me to some books on entrepreneurship and I was hooked. Now I want to own an NFL team one day.
While we’re a start-up, we’re in the unique and very fortunate position, of being spun out of an established company, Search Office Space (SOS) and I’m very fortunate to have Richard Smith, (founder of SOS) as my business partner. He is well known and liked in our industry.
Having said that, we are still a start-up and had to build our technology from scratch and grow our team. That of course requires capital. So the founding team has self-funded the business to date.
From the customer’s point of view, it’s like going online to book a hotel room, flat on Airbnb, or pulling out your phone to request an Uber.
For the venue partners, it’s like eBay. They sell their product (meeting rooms) through our marketplace and we facilitate the transaction. They control the price and contract directly with the customer, then each month we send their revenue to them after applying our transaction fees.
I started talking about my vision way back in 2011. I’ve written blog posts, spoke at conferences, participated on panels and collaborated with others on the topic that my vision touches.
When you believe that you’re right about something big, you have to plant a lot seeds and fertilise them – then eventually others start believing in your vision too.
I didn’t know it at the time, but meeting Richard was my biggest breakthrough as it eventually led to us joining forces.
I’ve learned that there is no single piece of advice for success. I could talk all day on things to do and not to do but mainly don’t expect it to be easy, have patience, and prepare your mind.
My vision for MeetingRooms.com is to stay at the forefront of innovation and push the category forward. I believe the future of our category is dependent upon innovation that makes life easier for people.
I strongly believe that starts with real-time meeting room bookings, but I’m thinking much bigger than that and we’re developing a series of products that we believe will grow our category significantly.
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