eConsultation the Elton way

What’s different about Elton Consulting’s approach to eConsultation?

Elton Consulting has been producing award winning websites for its clients for over 15 years. The always advancing technologies means that we can now offer a greater range of options for interacting with your stakeholders. These are in addition to the features that you are already familiar with such as project information, frequently asked questions, links to project documentation and feedback forms.

How do you benefit?

As always, this depends upon your organisation’s communication strategy and the way you define your stakeholders. Here are a number of ways you might use our eConsultation services:

Public consultation about a plan or proposal

  • meeting statutory requirements for consultation
  • testing options with key stakeholders and communities of interest
  • collecting data on potential suppliers and customers.

Secure communication across your project team in a way that integrates disciplines, and saves money:

  • moderated discussion about project issues
  • document review and amendment
  • document storage.

As part of a change management strategy within your organisation that facilitates communication between:

  • staff and/or
  • clients and/or
  • suppliers.

What are the features on offer?

Feature Description Benefits
Content management system A method of updating a website from within your organisation
  • reduces reliance on sub-contractors
  • speeds up process
  • saves money.
Moderated forum Allows interested people and organisations to express their views directly, and interact with each other
  • a transparent form of consultation
  • gives ability to intervene if misconceptions are gaining credibility.
Subscribe functions A mechanism for people and organisations to leave their contact details
  • allows you to build a database of stakeholders
  • facilitates communication through the consultation period and beyond
  • saves money.
On-line surveys A structured method of gaining feedback about particular issues
  • a good method of testing opinion about particular aspects of a plan
  • facilitates efficient reporting of the process.
RSS feeds Allows anyone to be notified when an update has occurred on your site
  • keeps people in touch with progress with your plans.
Social networking links Sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube offer another dimension to imparting information and receiving feedback on it
  • broadens the stakeholder base
  • reaches a broader audience.
Wiki functions Documents can be placed on a website allowing people to leave their comments on them paragraph by paragraph.
  • useful internal resource across teams
  • can also work in the public domain.

What are our eConsultation services?

  • development of communication and consultation strategies of which e-Consultation is one component
  • procurement advice
  • website design and functionality
  • content generation
  • site and forum moderation
  • site updates and maintenance
  • analysis of feedback
  • generation of consultation reports.

What’s different about Elton’s services?

eConsultation is offered as a stand-alone service, or part of our integrated services; so it is often a subset of our broader services to you such as communication and consultation strategies, social research and community planning.

Our web services – will therefore depend upon:

  • the project’s needs and your paramount objectives
  • who the stakeholders are and the purpose of communicating with them (websites are just one channel of communication and not appropriate in all circumstances)
  • financial and human resources available to generate content and manage the site.

Elton’s value

Our eConsultation services have been developed in-house with the minimum use of subcontractors. This results in fast turnaround times and value-for-money. For instance a standard website design and build is typically about $5,000 (excl. GST); this could include a basic survey form and feedback function. The same website with a customised interactive forum would typically cost $7,500 (excl. GST).

In other words by bringing the development of these products in-house, we have reduced costs and increased both functionality and value.

Click here to view some current examples of Elton websites.