April 29^th  saw the launch of Montana Business Assistance Connection’s (MBAC) exciting new website, www.MBACProspector.com. This site, which is accessible via any web browser, is a ‘one-stop-shop’ for business seeking economic, planning, geographic, and demographic data on available business properties in our region. It gives MBAC the most sophisticated, powerful, user-friendly tool on the Internet to provide businesses the information they need when considering a location for a new, expanding, or relocating business. It is the first program of its type in Montana, and fills an important role in bringing businesses to our community, as over ninety percent of the initial site selection screening is now done using the Internet.

Broker participation is a vital component of the project. Their participation includes uploading available properties to the site and ensuring these properties are up to date. In return for their participation, real estate professionals receive free, highly increased exposure to clients through the Internet and our diligent marketing efforts. One realtor in our community, Randall Green of Green & Green Realty Associates, LLC had this to say about MBACProspector.com: "This site provides unique local access to commercial data for businesses and investors and will prove invaluable to anyone seeking information about the Helena business community." In addition to Broker involvement, the site includes properties for sale or lease by owner.

MBACProspector.com is unique among property locator sites. This is a result of the powerful, interactive Internet GIS mapping technology it employs. Beyond just showing available sites and buildings, it lets businesses identify the unique geographic advantages and business opportunities available in the MBAC Region. The GIS features of the site allow visitors to rapidly tailor maps and reports to suit their needs and access data that would normally take weeks to collect and thousands of dollars to obtain from specialty data researchers. This data includes geographic "layers’ of information such as business improvement districts, airports, schools, traffic counts, public lands, trails and zip codes.

Article written by Sarah Lyytinen

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.