Business visitation program software is what a business retention and expansion (BRE) team uses to plan visits to local businesses, prepare for each one, capture what was said, and follow up on it. In BRE Pulse, visits your staff can prepare for and capture in minutes sit beside a check-in businesses actually answer, and every promise made on a visit gets an owner and a date.
Plan the visits
The planner has day, week and month views for visits, calls and meetings, and a visit schedule built from each business's priority. Visits sync with an Outlook calendar, so the schedule lives where your staff already work.
Prepare for each visit
Before any meeting, Prepare me gives you the business overview, last contact, open flags and commitments, what is missing, suggested questions and the objective. Ally does the preparation; you make the decisions.
Visit and capture notes by voice
Visit mode lets you prepare with the business at a glance and suggested questions, start the visit, and capture notes, people, commitments and photos. Speak your notes in the field, and Ally turns them into proposed facts, flags and to-dos for your review.
Review before anything is saved
Nothing from a visit changes the record on its own. You review each proposed change before it is saved. Red, yellow and green flags arrive with their evidence, and adverse flags become real only when a named person confirms them.
Follow up with an owner and a date
Every promise made to a business carries an owner and a due date, and overdue commitments are impossible to miss. The follow-up list shows who, why, what changed, what to ask, the outcome you want, the owner, the due date and what happens if it slips.
Between visits: the check-in
The Business Check-in takes two to five minutes with no login, shared as a link, a QR code or your organization's public check-in page, and the business chooses who may see its answers. Calls, emails, visits, virtual meetings and check-ins are recorded on the business, with who was there and what was agreed. For the questions to ask, see BRE survey questions.
Decide who to visit first
Work is scored on what is at stake: jobs and investment at stake, how significant the employer is, whether they are at risk, whether you promised, and whether anyone has ever engaged them. There is no single priority score that always sends attention to the largest taxpayer. A six-person company with a solvable barrier can outrank a 700-person company with no active need.
Start before the first visit
Upload what you already have, and BRE Pulse does the rest before your first visit. Business licenses, assessment exports, chamber lists and your spreadsheet are matched and de-duplicated into one canonical record per business, with contacts and locations. Every business gets a 0–100 Knowledge Score for how much you know, how current it is and how reliable it is, with the missing fields listed and the next thing to ask. That list is a ready-made agenda for the visit.
Why visit notes must lead somewhere
Collecting business information is where most systems stop. Here it has to lead somewhere: an organized response, accountable follow-through, and evidence of results. A survey that produces a report nobody acts on has cost a community the goodwill of every business that answered it. Staff visit notes, spoken or typed, become proposed facts, flags, actions and commitments for review before anything is saved.
Keep what you learned current
Each field has a review window: contacts and employment six months, plans 60 days, active issues and risks 14 to 30 days. Stale facts lower the Knowledge Score and are listed, so the next visit or check-in knows what to ask again.
Report the visits to your board
Monthly, quarterly, annual and board reports regenerate from the record, and every figure clicks through to the records behind it. See how reporting works, or see BRE in action.
Frequently asked questions
- Can staff capture visit notes without typing?
- Yes. Speak your notes in the field, and Ally turns them into proposed facts, flags and to-dos for your review.
- Does anything from a visit change the record automatically?
- No. You review each proposed change before it is saved, and adverse flags become real only when a named person confirms them.
- How do we make sure promises made on a visit are kept?
- Every promise made to a business carries an owner and a due date, and overdue commitments are impossible to miss on the follow-up list.
Related
See BRE Pulse working
Walk through a demonstration township with your own questions: the business records, a visit, the follow-up list and a board report.
