I set out designing the hub not just to help people have websites and run their businesses but to make a networking platform that everyone can benifit from in the Whitsundays.

So let me explain what I mean when I say business networking...

I'm not talking about just being friends online and following each other's profiles. Using the hub, businesses will be able to cross sell products and services, package deals with other companies, interact with each other from both B2B and B2C perspectives. The possibilities of how this can be used for collabaration and support are limited only by our imagination. The features in the hub aren't limited to organising your businesses workflow, we can create modules and tools that build business relationships and enable functionality that can be shared across companies and accounts.

Business collabaration

I wanted this system to be about businesses working together and not just about servicing customers. The beauty of a shared system like this is that everyone is using the same setup so there are so many possibilites to overlap features and functionality accross business accounts. I'm not going to pretend that I know the best practices for everything business. What I plan to do is offer up the platform and work closely with everyone to develop and evolve it in a way that really fits how people are doing business in the Whitsundays.

The Social side

Let's not overlook the fact that this hub will organically grow to become somewhat of a local social network all on it's own. The business side of things is just one aspect of how the hub will work. The other side to the story is the community user accounts. To be able to access the information available and interact with the businesses in the hub the Whitsunday community of users and customers will have their own personal accounts, anyone can sign up for a personal account that has nothing to do with running a business.

This will enable customers to follow businesses, get news and information, purchase their products and services etc. but I don't want to limit this to only business interaction. As the hub gets going and more and more people become involved it will become clear that there is huge potential for this to double as a local community social hub as well. I have lots of great ideas for features that will be for the community of users, not just businesses.