South Lanarkshire Council is constantly investigating better ways to filter vital information out to the business community. That's why we and our partners are jumping on the information superhighway through the development of two new services: the Lanarkshire Online Business Directory and the Lanarkshire Alliance Gateway Website.

Business Directory
Although South Lanarkshire Economic Development currently puts its Business Directory on the web, we want to make that service even better.

So, along with North Lanarkshire Council and Lanarkshire Development Agency, we are in the process of developing the Lanarkshire On-line Business Directory.

The initial design was put forward for consideration by the partners in May this year and the new directory will be on-line in the near future.

So, what's so great about the new directory? Well, it will give businesses access to information on more than 5000 companies throughout North and South Lanarkshire. The current search facility will be extended to allow users to click on a map of Lanarkshire (split into 23 areas) and do a search of that area or a town within it.

South Lanarkshire Economic Development officer, John Mitchell explained: "This new Lanarkshire service was developed from South Lanarkshire Council's highly successful online business directory. The Council and its partners felt it was more sensible to amalgamate all the data we held into one directory. This way anyone with an internet connection can get easy access to basic information on suppliers of products and services in Lanarkshire."

Gateway Project
Another economic development tool the Council is involved in is a Gateway website under the Lanarkshire Alliance - a new link website for the Council and its partners.

At the moment South Lanarkshire Council and its partners North Lanarkshire Council, Lanarkshire Development Agency, Scottish Homes, Greater Glasgow and Lanarkshire Health Boards, and the Employment Service, all have corporate websites.

John said: "It's a mechanism for improving and promoting partnership work. At the moment, we've got a number of corporate websites which are not inter-linked. This new project will allow us to have one website which will act as a gateway to all the others.

"It's an open partnership and we're looking for other public sector partners to become involved in this project.

"Another part of it will be protected. Users will have a password to enter it and the site will allow them to exchange information. We might possibly also have forms put on it, but that will be something we will look at in the future."

For more information on the new Business Directory or Lanarkshire Alliance Gateway Website, contact John on 01698 455138.

Lanarkshire Online Business Directory web address:http://www.lanarkshirebusiness.org.uk

Lanarkshire Alliance Gateway web address: http://www.lanarkshire.org

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