Smart services for thriving communities in the digital age

Rogers Business

Understanding digital solutions for community engagement.

city landscape

We all increasingly live, work and learn with digital tools; the infrastructure and support services we provide to the people in our communities need to reflect that daily reality. This holds true whether you’re managing a municipality, school board, university, utility or large business campus. And the myriad smart solutions on the market certainly offer no shortage of ways to connect with your community. But change is never easy, especially when you’re building upon established processes that integrate across departments. Constant innovation also brings new service capabilities to market all the time. The growing needs of communities coupled with the pace of innovation can result in services delivered over disparate platforms.

As you connect more dots, you gain additional insights, allowing for data-driven decision-making.

bciti delivered by Rogers was designed to enable meaningful community transformations through technology. Significant opportunities for a smart city, campus or other community can be realized by unifying its various services and solutions together in one place. As you connect more dots, you gain additional insights, allowing for data-driven decision-making. Moreover, the experience for community members and residents is improved and enriched when services are delivered over a single platform that cohesively manages community living, working and participation. (And the sooner smart services align, the better the results.)

This isn’t only about efficiency behind the scenes. Until recently, that’s how many leaders like city planners and property managers viewed smart technologies: “smart” meant things run smoothly. That benefit still exists, but technology like bciti is even more impactful as a tool to influence and improve the lives of residents. Capabilities such as chatbots and digital citizen surveys help you ensure resident concerns are heard and their needs met, while push notification alerts help them stay informed on (whether that be real-time issues like traffic re-routing and emergency measures, or something as simple as notifications for upcoming enrolment deadlines for local programs).

Understanding data makes stronger communities.

As part of instituting positive change in your community, it’s vital that you understand in precise detail how it functions. While surveys and polling help smart city platforms, like bciti, offer a more streamlined technological solution that is both ethical and secure. In fact, a properly implemented smart city solution will provide data beyond its core function. Consider something as simple as a resident using an application to find an event: the data collected can also help city planners and local businesses better understand transportation patterns, parking needs and the potential for post-event crowding on campus.

By integrating existing solutions and automating the data analysis, you are able to understand and address the needs of your community without having to sacrifice their privacy.

Of course, the value of big data goes much further. Through centralized artificial intelligence analysis, staff and planners have actionable insights into changing needs. This in turn allows for proactive decision making. It also relieves a burden placed on many officials, who may not have the infrastructure to constantly patrol or inquire about how their community’s specific needs are evolving. By integrating existing solutions and automating the data analysis, you are able to understand and address the needs of your community without having to sacrifice their privacy.

Help your communities make a comeback.

As noted, there is tremendous opportunity to build stronger connections with community members and visitors alike by offering services and events in one place—it improves engagement, makes it easy to sign up, and people get used to working with the tool, so trying new services becomes more intuitive. With the COVID-19 pandemic’s dramatic impact on community engagement, services and events, it’s now more important than ever to help residents and visitors find new ways to rediscover where they live, work and play.

A core feature of bciti delivered by Rogers is the Digital Citizen Card offering personalized information, notifications and alerts. This end-to-end digital solution provides residents, non-residents, and even tourists with a type of digital ID that helps keep track of registrations and access to events or other activities based on a user’s status.

Even as communities reopen, serious public health challenges will remain for some time yet. How do you clearly inform and address the larger community, and ensure they stay safe?

The Digital Citizen Card can also help you manage these situations. Not only does this provide another tool to help public health officials ensure city events don’t exceed the restricted capacity, but in the event of COVID-19 exposure, they can also track and quickly notify anyone potentially affected.

Make running a smart community more affordable.

However, embracing a consolidated interface helps dramatically reduce the cost, workload and learning curve. In addition to future-proofing how you provide services, a platform like bciti simplifies and provides structure to the robust suite of features for engaging your community and harnessing the data to improve their lives.

Learn more about smart c ities or speak with your local Rogers representative for more details.