Meet the Great Things Award winners recognized on stage who are doing great things with iMIS, TopClass LMS and OpenWater to embrace digital transformation for their organization and improve engagement.
The Great Things Awards are all about recognizing iMIS, TopClass LMS and OpenWater clients and their solution provider partners for the steps they are taking towards digital transformation, which is the process of using digital technologies to create enhanced customer experiences, new business processes and effect culture change in order to meet the changing business, customer and market demands.
We review countless submissions from the community, sharing stories on the great things their peers, colleagues and partners are achieving. We are pleased to announce the 2022 Great Things Award winners from our recent 2022 iNNOVATIONS Conference, held September 13-14 in Arlington, Virginia and the 2022 Toronto iNNOVATIONS Day conference, held November 2 in Toronto, Ontario.
Christina Beal, Sr. Manager of Database and Technology at the American Advertising Federation (AAF), told us, “We pride ourselves on being the unifying voice for the advertising community. At AAF we use OpenWater very frequently. Our student members submit applications via the OpenWater portal, and our speakers and judges get a consistent end-user experience.”
“The staff at AAF appreciate the all-in-one system that OpenWater affords us. The process for setting deadlines and reminders, selecting & utilizing judges, and collecting payments is seamless and not tech-intensive. As a one-person team, I rarely have to help the AAF staff with OpenWater especially since it is integrated into iMIS. We have been achieving Great Things and expanding our awards and conference base by using iMIS and OpenWater.”
“I neglected to mention that OpenWater was able to handle our virtual conference needs, during the height of the pandemic when we still need to engage with our members and continue our student competitions. As the go-to person in our organization for tech needs, implementing OpenWater alongside iMIS has made my role more straightforward as I am able to manage the database without staff being overwhelmed by OpenWater. On the contrary, they depend on it heavily and have appreciated the workflows and overall collaborative opportunities afforded by OpenWater.”
What’s next for AAF? Beal shared some items at the top of the AAF task list to tackle now that they are in the cloud:
We are pleased to honor the entire American Advertising Federation team, as well as the team at John Consulting, with a Great Things Award from ASI.
Joe Lakis, President of the Center for Workplace Compliance (CWC), told us, “Our aspirations to achieve great things with our new website were initially modest. Our old website utilized a variety of third-party and homegrown applications to deliver the extensive practical content that our members had come to expect from us. But the site did not deliver the experience that we wanted our members to have and that our members to have and users expected to have. The main challenge was developing a plan to migrate more than 6,000 pieces of content that had been developed and maintain and stored outside of iMIS.”
“We knew that iMIS was generally capable of managing, securing, and even curating this content for our members. So, we commissioned a project to completely overhaul our website and better leverage the platform’s capabilities. Our project was guided by three overarching goals: Improve the overall user experience, increase the site's functionality, and effectively manage access to our member-restricted content without sacrificing our exposure to those who might not know anything about us.”
To reach these goals, the CWC kept the front-end and back-end architecture of the site simple and leveraged iMIS's native capabilities as much as possible. Their new website has given them a much stronger platform that they continue to build upon to make each member's experience qualitatively better.
Joe John from John Consulting told us, “The CWC.org website was created using mostly out-of-the-box iMIS technology. Our team was brought in for brand discussions and through an iterative review process we created the new design for www.cwc.org and then worked to implement this new design in the standard Cities Responsive website template.”
“Many standard iMIS features were used including leveraging content tagging plus common search utility used in the site’s Resources section. The site also uses out-of-the-box designed IQAs in several areas including a dynamic leadership & staff directory, events listings, and featured corporate members/sponsors.”
“Through these discussions with the CWC team, we were able to incorporate their vision for this smart and intuitive website with robust functionality, fully integrated with iMIS.”
We are pleased to honor the entire Center for Workplace Compliance team, as well as the team at John Consulting, with a Great Things Award from ASI.
It was nearly 30 years ago when an idea to further the cause of affordable housing became the catalyst for a movement that spread across British Columbia. Since then, BC Non-Profit Housing Association (BCNPHA) has evolved, grown, and made important contributions to the housing sector through advocacy, education and support.
BCNPHA provides research and advocacy resources that influence policy and funding decisions at all levels of government. Additionally, the association delivers education and professional development for board members, leaders, and staff of non-profit housing organizations. BCNPHA member programs have saved the sector millions of dollars on the products and services they need to operate their organizations and energy-efficiency support to help the non-profit housing sector go green. The organization helps societies take better care of their buildings so that existing homes last longer and improve the health and comfort of tenants. Implementing green retrofit projects also means the sector uses less energy and reaps significant savings on utility costs.
Using iMIS since 2012, the BCNPHA subscribed to the Performance Improvement Advisory Service from 2020-2022 to facilitate their move to iMIS EMS in the cloud. They started with a new iMIS website to improve the member experience. Justin Harvey, Sr. IT Manager tells us, “As a small, staffed organization, iMIS has enabled us to provide high-level support to our members. We’ve moved away from silos, Excel, and PDFs to a more structured and predictable system for data management.”
“We created our new website so that we could manage our annual conference. At the time, everything was being done using very administratively heavy processes on our WordPress website. Over the years we discovered all the functionality that iMIS and RiSE websites could offer, and we learned to utilize those tools and match them with our existing workflows."
We are pleased to honor the entire BC Non-Profit Housing Association team with a Great Things Award from ASI.
Sharon Westmoreland, Information Systems Manager at the Oklahoma State Medical Association (OSMA), told us, “We have been using iMIS for many years, but the move to TopClass LMS a year ago has been a game-changer for us. Before we made the move, our previous LMS was unable to distinguish between members and non-members, which made discounts and member pricing difficult, it required a different password than that required for our self-service, member portal, and long, complex instructions for attendees.”
“There were times when we needed additional people to staff the phones after big events. The need for a change become even more evident when our CME program gained National attention, offered free to healthcare professionals during the pandemic. This sent a lot more traffic to our website. A lot of the new attendees had difficulty using the site.”
“And now because of TopClass LMS, much of the manual work for staff has been removed because of the integration with iMIS. Now when we create an event in iMIS, the corresponding course is automatically created in TopClass LMS and thanks to the integration between TopClass LMS and Zoom, a Zoom webinar is also created on the fly. "
The impacts of implementing TopClass LMS:
We are pleased to honor the entire Oklahoma State Medical Association team with a Great Things Award from ASI.
CPA Saskatchewan, an iMIS client since 2014, ensures the protection of the public and the visibility of the profession. It represents all areas of expertise of the accounting profession, including assurance, financial accounting, management and management accounting, finance and taxation. The CPA designation is Canada’s pre-eminent accounting and business designation with more than 5,000 members and candidates in Saskatchewan.
Al Povoledo from Bursting Silver, the Authorized iMIS Solution Provider for CPA Saskatchewan, told us that, “In 2019, the iMIS Community began to hear and learn about iMIS in the cloud. CPA Saskatchewan was ready to make some changes. The leadership at CPA Saskatchewan looked at this as an opportunity for a BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION. They could have easily just upgraded and kept what they had, but they saw it as an opportunity to take a hard look at their processes, improve them, and configure a solution to align with the modern-day needs of their members and staff.”
CPA Saskatchewan is all-in with iMIS. They upgraded to iMIS EMS in the cloud in 2020 and use iMIS for everything they do including:
Leigha Hubick, Director of Regulatory Affairs at CPA Saskatchewan told us that “moving to iMIS EMS has enabled the organization to go paperless and automated most of our processes.”
Their move to iMIS EMS started with simplifying their data structure. Reviewing and relearning the database by asking the questions:
This process was laborious, especially with respect to their Finance processes and how they handled product codes, invoices, receipts, and pre-bills. But their thoughtful and informed decision-making process enabled them to move to use iMIS EMS as close to out-of-the-box as they could.
This move served them well as they worked through the pandemic and are perhaps more prepared to work remotely now and at any time in the future, if necessary. Working from home, every team member was able to access all the information they needed to get their jobs done. Additionally, all this information was now stored in iMIS EMS.
If they had to do it again, moving to iMIS EMS during a pandemic would not be their choice, but through this transition, their team experienced increased teamwork and better clarification of roles especially as they head into their busiest time of the year. And while completing this transition during the pandemic was a great feat, admittedly, the team misses the comradery and personal interaction of being together in the office. And while no one knows the future, CPA Saskatchewan knows that their iMIS EMS based infrastructure enables their team to function completely whether it be from the home or their office on Parliament Avenue.
Their message to other clients: “Be patient, give yourself time to run the systems parallel for a period of time.” And have your staff start learning the tools they will need to navigate iMIS EMS.
We are pleased to honor the entire CPA Saskatchewan team, as well as the team at Bursting Silver, with a Great Things Award from ASI.
The Canadian Alliance of Physiotherapy Regulators (CAPR) is a credentialing and assessment agency that provides evaluation services on behalf of its Members – the provincial and territorial physiotherapy regulators, called Colleges.
CAPR has been using iMIS since 2019, and is currently on iMIS EMS, actively using iMIS Forms. iMIS EMS has enabled them to consolidate information into a single platform. Additionally, standardized workflows in iMIS bring more structure to the process. Once fully deployed, it will enable every staffer to effectively work from home and enable them to grow in their capabilities.
CAPR receives tens of thousands of international applications annually. Working with their solution provider, Visual Antidote, they have moved from a largely paper-based system to an iMIS cloud solution utilizing iMIS Form Builder. This module allows for efficient management of their complex review workflows, where applications go through a series of phases and steps, each of which is managed by different staff or team. Further, tens of thousands of paper envelopes and paper contents are scanned and added through iMIS into Sharepoint with a cloud-friendly SharePoint integration that stores all relevant documents for each registrant in iMIS.
Before, everything had to be managed as separate activities independent of each other. Now, with enhanced workflows and automated processes, the CAPR team provides better service and information to regulators throughout the country.
Up next for CAPR:
With all this going on, it's easy to see that the staff is excited and confident because they see the potential of this platform. As a result, a culture of identifying “what’s next” in iMIS is developing.
We are pleased to honor the entire Canadian Alliance of Physiotherapy Regulators team, as well as the team at Visual Antidote, with a Great Things Award from ASI.
The Canadian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (CIQS) was founded and registered under the Dominion of Canada Act in November 1959. It currently represents over 2,000 national and industry professionals.
CIQS works on behalf of its members to promote the profession to the construction industry, its allied professions, and government officials. It has developed reciprocal agreements with a variety of industry organizations and is a member of the International Construction Measurements Standards (ICMS). ICMS is a group of over 40 professional and not-for-profit organizations from around the world working towards global consistency in construction cost analysis.
The team at CIQS is small and in 2021 it undertook the large project of establishing a newly designed website and association software system in order to serve its members better.
The iMIS system gave CIQS more functionality and reduced tedious and time-consuming manual operations. The certification module had the biggest impact on staff time and function. Everything is now in one place and gone are the days of tracking with excel and storing documents in other platforms.
CIQS re-designed its website, creating a fresh new look and additional functionality for members. The former CIQS website was over 800 pages! They were able to pair it down to under 100 pages and offer its members and the public a site that is easy to navigate and aesthetically pleasing while maintaining all of the important information they need.
Staff also benefitted from the change, as they can create and maintain website pages for their department, instead of relying on one individual to do all of the work.
CEO Sheila Lennon would like to give special thanks to the ASI team for their guidance and support throughout the entire process: Kristina Haley, Troy Stenback, Korri Neill, and Tina Jersey, the senior project manager, as well as the team at Visual Antidote, James Harrison and Sebastian Lynch who worked on the forms that were incorporated into the website.
Up next for CIQS:
We are pleased to honor the entire Canadian Institute of Quantity Surveyors team, as well as the team at Visual Antidote, with a Great Things Award from ASI.
We love hearing and sharing the great things that the iMIS community is achieving. You’re invited to share your iMIS story on how your association, union or non-profit has transformed your overall performance, streamlined your business processes, improved member engagement, increased member retention, or any way that iMIS helps you achieve your mission’s goals and keeps you ready for the next big thing.
To nominate an organization or nominate your team for a Great Things Award and share your iMIS story visit the iMIS website at https://www.imis.com/nominate.
Meet the March award winners doing great things with iMIS to embrace digital transformation for their association and improve member engagement.
Meet the April award winners doing great things with iMIS to embrace digital transformation for their association and improve member engagement.
Meet the September award winners who are doing great things with iMIS to embrace digital transformation and improve member engagement.