Client

The Neil Squire Society (NSS), is a 20 year-old non-profit organization that provides technology driven devices and solutions to facilitate improvement in the quality of life and empowerment of people with physical disabilities, older adults and people recovering from illnesses or injury. Over many years, the NSS has continually developed innovative programs and have accumulated a world recognized level of expertise in Assistive Technologies and run an R&D program which uses sophisticated technology in the forefront of research in this area.

Challenge

The NSS’s social enterprise, Neil Squire Solutions, works in partnership with community organizations in six smaller centres around the province of BC.

NSS needed to integrate a network solution that would consolidate, strengthen and centralize data from all their offices.

The key challenge was to create an open architecture database that could be accessed and shared by all the sites, with the ability to allow the tracking of data by the main Burnaby site, which was using a local network based Microsoft Access database. This was seen as the critical aspect of the project. Services, outcomes, equipment (provided or recommended) needed to be tracked and consolidated on a network wide basis while maintaining security and confidentiality.

Solution

JDQ Systems Inc. worked with the Neil Squire Solutions team to evaluate the needs and presented a comprehensive report on the project requirements for this client management system. These project requirements were used to guide the Neil Squire team as they selected a 3rd party application that met their requirements.

Result

Using the 3Spheres participatory model, which involves “helping” beyond the limited scope of a project, new insights on the benefits of helping, learning and profiting evolved.  Bob Ages, Neil Squire Society’s Director of Business Development agreed: “It is thanks of course to the JDQ 3Spheres team that we knew what we are doing when we selected the best 3rd party application for our needs.”

The end result of this coordinated effort gave the term “profitability” new meaning. “Clearly, in this project all parties ‘profited’ by the experience, states Graham Jones, President of VANTUG & Executive Director of IT Volunteering; “and that is the way it should be. The NSS got the result they were looking for plus some bonus discoveries. JDQ got some more ‘takeaways’ from their ongoing 3Spheres program perhaps to apply in their business. I am equally sure that all individuals involved ‘profited’ in some personal way, whether simply by the satisfaction of using their knowledge and experience for good, by taking away some new knowledge or personal growth, and gaining some new friendships to enrich their lives”.

Dr. Gary Birch, P.Eng and Executive Director of the NSS had this to say about JDQ’s involvement in the project: “We are grateful to businesses like JDQ Systems Inc. who initiated the 3Spheres of Reciprocity™ program and have demonstrated how we can all help, learn and grow together.”