Client Profiles
Canadian Professional Sales Association 
Based in Toronto, ON, Canadian Professional Sales Association (CPSA) is a national sales association comprised of nearly 30,000 sales and marketing professionals. CPSA provides a variety of services, including professional development and travel discounts, to its members. Membership is driven on an annual subscription basis.
To ensure a high renewal rate of its membership, CPSA is dedicated to constantly improving the types of services it offers, as well as enhancing the experience of its members when using its services. It is also committed to being as efficient as possible with its internal systems and its process engineering.
To ensure these objectives are met, CPSA is dedicated to leveraging information technology to the fullest extent possible within the constraints of its budget. The CPSA has a minimal internal IT staff and instead they have a senior executive responsible for their IT investment, and rely on MikeTango to fulfill the IT activities to be carried out by the organization.
MikeTango provides for CPSA both project-related and day-to-day operational services. The day-to-day activities are geared towards ensuring the basic infrastructure, including hardware, desktops, application software, etc. operate efficiently and that staff are able to be effective with their software tools. MikeTango also carries out migration of systems and ensures there is an upgrade path to keep CPSA’s operations working into the future.
CPSA carries out a formal review at the beginning of each fiscal year to identify and adjust key business objectives and to decide upon what technology investments need to be made in order to support those objectives. MikeTango works closely with CPSA executives throughout this process in helping determine best approaches, carry out investigations of potential technologies, etc. and, together, a working plan is drawn up for the year. MikeTango then lays out a plan for each of the identified projects for management, including a full budget and timelines, and then executes on that plan, working with CPSA staff throughout. MikeTango has full responsibility for the successful delivery of these projects, and is accountable directly to CPSA executive for them.
Recently, a project called for the buildout of a duplicate data centre for CPSA’s back office infrastructure. The objective was to strengthen the resilliance of CPSA’s infrastructure, which operates on a 24x7 basis on behalf of its members. The new replicated system now operates out of an independent data centre, is fully redundant, and ensures CPSA will continue to operate even under extreme conditions. The project was carried out over an 8 month period, and was delivered on-time and under budget.
A critical value added service offered by CPSA to its members are travel discount programs. In 2009, CPSA committed to developing a tool for its members that would act as a travel assistant by making useful travel information such as details on hotels, restaurants, gas stations, etc. available directly to members while they are traveling.
MikeTango developed for CPSA the BlackBerry application BTSidekick (www.btsidekick.com). The project was structured to enable CPSA to release the software in a short 12 week window, elicit user feedback, and to undergo 2 major revisions of the application within the first year. It was important for CPSA that the application be developed such that they may use this to market both their own discount travel package, as well as being able to rebrand the service for other potential markets. BTSideKick spent time as a top-10 application for the BlackBerry and has garnered significant positive feedback from existing members as well as driving new membership to CPSA.
As stated by Aaron Pais, IT Manager for CPSA, “This year alone, we identified two strategic projects – the development of the travel assistant BlackBerry application BTSidekick and the conversion of our server infrastructure into a ‘private cloud’ providing lower TCO, increased flexibility, elasticity and scalability. Both projects were deemed a huge success, and will have a direct impact on our bottom line.”
For more information about CPSA, please see www.cpsa.com.
The Métis Nation of Ontario
Established in 1993, the Métis Nation of Ontario (MNO) represents the collective aspirations, rights and interests of Métis people and communities throughout Ontario. The MNO has a democratic, province-wide governance structure with local Community Councils mandated to support local governance through signed Charter agreements, Together with the MNO they represent the rights and interests of regional rights-bearing Métis communities throughout the province.
The MNO is the only recognized provincial Métis governance structure in Ontario and has established bilateral and tripartite processes with the federal and provincial governments. The MNO also has a negotiated accommodation agreement with the provincial government on Métis harvesting rights.
The MNO, through its province-wide infrastructure delivers a range of programs and services in the areas of health, education, labour market development, and housing, to approximately 73,000 Ontario Métis. More than 150 people work for the MNO in 19 offices throughout the province.
The MNO relies on government funding to administer and deliver these programs. Because MNO is a not-for-profit the government places restrictions on how funding can be used. Program specific funding doesn’t allow for, amongst other things, the creation and maintenance of infrastructure. Regardless, MNO needs infrastructure to support program delivery to its geographically dispersed offices and citizenry.
The MNO currently operates this infrastructure network with just one full-time staff member dedicated to IT. Since 1996, the MNO has turned to MikeTango to provide operational support and leadership to the IT staff, as well as to drive a number of project-based initiatives.
At the heart of the MNO is the only recognized Registry of citizens in the province. Métis living in Ontario can apply to become a citizen of the MNO. An independent Registrar assesses and authorizes citizenship when applicants meet the criteria set out in the National Definition for Métis, adopted at the Métis National Council’s 18th General Assembly in 2002 and subsequently accepted by the MNO. An important part of the validation of citizens is based on genealogical information showing Métis ancestry. This is of particular importance when determining who is entitled to share in the collective rights of the Métis expecially in the area of harvesting.
Prior to June 2009, the MNO Registry was using an application created in the 1990’s. MikeTango was key to keeping this legacy application operational by adapting it to meet the on-going needs of the Registry. When the need for a new database became obvious, MikeTango supported the MNO’s application to access funding by providing requirements definition, project scoping, and process analysis. The new Registry application created by MikeTango meets the key needs of the MNO Registry team, its citizens, staff, political leadership and government funders. The application is built using SharePoint, and is integrated as part of the MNO’s overall system architecture.
“MikeTango continues to play a leadership role in our Registry project. From the initial assessment of requirements through to the deployment and training of our staff, the technical know-how, attention to detail and sensitivity to the complex subtleties of the Registry process were key factors in ensuring the creation of an efficient, transparent and user friendly application for the MNO”.
Janet Leader, Director of Registry, Métis Nation of Ontario.
For more information about the Métis Nation of Ontario, please see www.metisnation.org.