January 7, 2016 | Red Deer, AB – In 2014 the Westerner Park Board of Directors engaged the services of Management and Economic Consultant, Richard Hudson, to conduct an Environmental Scan Project.
Five main objectives guided their research:
1. Assess awareness, perceptions and opinions of Westerner Park as a progressive community leader, economic and tourism generator, and community contributor and facilitator for Red Deer and the Central Alberta Region.
2. Assess awareness, and support for, Westerner Park's Strategic Development Plan.
3. Assess awareness for Westerner Park's ownership structure and sources of funding.
4. Assess the satisfaction of customers, identifying separately commercial customers (ie. event organizers and exhibitors) and general event attendees.
5. Develop a customer service optimization standard for future planning and decision-making.
The information gathered in the research has been extremely useful for the future strategic vision of the organization. The Westerner Park Board of Directors and Management team is grateful for the commentary provided by the community and have used it to fuel their planning and decision making over the past year.
“Westerner Park is committed to addressing the areas where expectations were not being met.” said Graham Heron, Westerner Park, President and Board Chair. “Specifically the Board undertook planning to develop plans and procedures to measure our stakeholder engagement and will be revisiting our progress towards community engagement in the coming year.”
Key findings from the research provided the Board direction in the following Goals:
Events
Seek to optimize the utilization of the facilities, seek opportunities to utilize the facilities through combination of self-promoted and external events.
Be an integral part of the economic engine that is Central Alberta.
Infrastructure
Continue to maintain existing facilities to achieve optimal benefit from existing infrastructure, seek and consider a wide range of options for continued implementation of the land use master plan.
Adopt a proactive capital development and enhancement plan using financial strength.
Strive for highest and best use of all facilities available.
Community Involvement
Be more active as an organization in community initiatives.
Communicate direction and events – adopt multiple platforms to inform community of events.
Customer Experience
Be more customer focused in all aspects of customer interaction (service, support and logistics) – from event booking and organization to food service.
Enhancements to internet accessibility while on site, website utilities and web based bookings.
Westerner Park is appreciative of the community feedback and their continued support. The Board has incorporated the guidance from the environmental scan into their strategic planning over the past year and will continue to do so moving forward into the future. Westerner Park promises to continue to be committed to creating world class, big city events, with small town hospitality.