Business Registration Form Software Services

Description: The City of Lake Forest’s Economic Development Division is seeking to enter into a one-year agreement for a software solution to streamline business registration form intake and storage. The goal of this project is to improve the experience for businesses seeking to open or operate in Lake Forest while increasing staff efficiency and supporting the City’s broader business attraction, retention, and expansion efforts. The City's current Business Registration system can be found here and provides intake for both commercial and home-based business forms. The desired solution should provide a centralized, user-friendly platform for application and registration intake, document collection, business information management, and communication with the business community. Additional capabilities may include customizable digital forms and workflows, program administration, reporting dashboards, integration with the City’s website and existing systems, and tools to support future business assistance programs. The City is interested in solutions that can be configured to meet its operational needs, reduce manual administrative work, improve access to information for local businesses, and accommodate future initiatives as the City’s economic development programs evolve. The City of Lake Forest does not issue a business license; instead, the Economic Development Division collects business registration information for commercial and home-based businesses through its optional business registration process. This information serves as an important resource for maintaining business records, supporting communication with the business community, and advancing the City's business attraction, retention, and expansion efforts. The City has transitioned between business registration systems over time and is seeking a solution that improves both the applicant experience and internal information management. Under a long-standing, previous system (not the current system), businesses submitted registration forms electronically, but staff had to manually transfer the submitted information into a separate system. The City also previously lacked the ability to provide businesses with ongoing access to their submitted forms, making it more difficult for businesses to review and update their information. The City is seeking a centralized solution that accommodates both commercial and home-based business registrations, allows businesses to access and update their registration information as needed, and securely maintains submitted forms and associated business data in one location. The solution should reduce duplicate data entry and manual administrative work while allowing City staff to efficiently access, manage, and export business information for use in other City resources, including the City's website. Because the City retains business registration records on an ongoing basis, the solution must accommodate unlimited business registrations, data retention, and document storage without restrictive record, submission, or storage limits. An ideal solution will be user-friendly for businesses, efficient for staff, and flexible enough to support the City's evolving economic development and business assistance programs.