Portfolio

Client: Tewatohnhi'saktha (Kahnawake Economic Development Commission)

The Kahnawake Economic Development Commission (KEDC)’s Native Economic Management Software (NEMS) is a proprietary case management software designed to help economic development organizations keep track of clients, projects, and loans, and act more effectively for the community.

Our duties included:

• Analyzing and updating business and system requirements throughout the lifecycle
• Testing, troubleshooting, and debugging the previously developed software
• Developing and customizing the software according to business requirements
• Performing Quality Assurance Testing in preparation for deployment
• Training three separate business units
• Deploying the NEMS software in Tewatohnhi’saktha’s business environment

Technology: EJB 3 (Enterprise Java Beans 3), Struts framework, Hibernate for persistence, Apache Tiles layout and presentation framework. The application runs in JBoss on CentOS 5 (RHEL compatible), uses MySQL as its data store and employs LDAP to authenticate network users.

Client: Canada Post

Acosys provided business development services for Canada Post’s Postal Transformation project. This project was Canada Post’s largest since the institution of the Postal Code. Canada Post was upgrading its mail processing technology to make its IT infrastructure state of the art, and transforming its current business model at a national level. Working within a team, our responsibilities included:

• Analyze current states of Canada Post IT infrastructure

• Research and recommend infrasturcture improvements

• Perform Quality Assurance Testing on Canada Post’s equipment and operations

• Analyzing mail equipment specifications, vendor RFPs, process documentation, and other sources, to recommend and plan future modes of operation.

Client: Environics Research Group

Acosys administered, supported, and helped interpret the results of the Urban Aboriginal Peoples’ Survey (UAPS) in two Canadian urban centres: Thunder Bay and Montreal. We introduced an innovative approach of using Indigenous peoples to administer the survey. Our responsibilities during this effort included:

• Gathering of quantitative and qualitative survey results in a face-to-face interview format

• Coding of results into a database provided by the client

• Interpretation of open-ended responses from an Indigenous perspective• Analysis and report on results to stakeholders

• Providing recommendations for how the Survey could improve its ability to capture cultural context and nuance

Acosys delivered early in both cities.

Client: Tewatohnhi’saktha

Acosys was hired to examine the possibility of bringing the NEMS solution to market and turning it into a source of revenue for KEDC. Our responsibilities during this effort included:

• Identification and investigation of various target markets, including Indigenous and mainstream organizations

• Development of an outreach script and development of an online survey

• Complete quantitative and qualitative analysis and report of survey results to project stakeholders

• Gathering of intelligence on competitors and market trends

• Go/No-Go recommendation, product costing recommendation, revenue forecast

Client: McGill University, Faculty of Engineering

Acosys was hired to conduct an IT Services Review for McGill’s Faculty of Engineering, specifically to determine client satisfaction levels among various demographics (students, staff, and professors) and provide recommendations for improvement. Our responsibilities during this effort included:

• Conducting individual interviews with IT services and management representatives

• Spearheading internet-based surveys of over 3000 students, staff members, and professors

• Performance of statistical and qualitative analyses of survey results, report and presentation of findings to stakeholders

• Conducting follow-up focus groups with targeted users for more granular feedback

• Inter-faculty interviews to benchmark McGill-wide IT service levels

All of these inputs were used to create a Recommendations document which presented a strategic plan for improving the Faculty of Engineering’s IT service delivery.

Client: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC)

Acosys has worked for the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND) in three outreach efforts, of similar scope and size, for the Federal Government’s Procurement Strategy for Aboriginal Businesses; the most recent is cited here. The purpose of PSAB is to build capacity among Canadian Indigenous peoples by providing set-asides in Federal contracts. Our responsibilities during these efforts included:

• Researching and building of a list of eligible businesses, including contact information

• Creation of a database mirroring survey questions for safe and searchable storage of outreach results

• Interviewing these businesses by telephone, performing over 2,000 calls all told

• Informing them of the benefits and opportunities afforded by PSAB

• If already registered, inquiring about levels of satisfaction with the PSAB process