A Letter to MRS Clients and Partners From President and CEO Alex Perklin
During the early stages of the COVID19 crisis, I reached out to all our valued clients and stakeholders to extend our best wishes and to keep you informed on how we’re navigating this crisis. Today, as we enter the holiday season with the pandemic still very much a part of our lives and lockdowns still in effect, I wanted to reach out to you to extend our continued well wishes and give you an update regarding our current status.
Thankfully, we are extremely proud to announce that MRS remains strong, vibrant and resourceful through this pandemic. Although we implemented non-HR related operational cost efficiencies, we leveraged this crisis to invest in building and strengthening our HR assets to the fullest. This included building hands-on knowledge in critical technology areas, expanding the depth and breadth of our skillsets and expertise and deploying the matrix concept of account relationship and service management.
Since the outbreak in March 2020, we have worked diligently to institute and advance the following programs:
Rearchitecting WorthIT as a suite of cloud-native web apps
MRS has expedited our long-term strategy of rearchitecting and expanding our WorthIT suite of financial applications to cloud-native web apps. WorthIT Savant, our powerful new lease, loan and mortgage analysis tool has recently been released for field testing. WorthIT Location cloud version, using GPS and mobile tracking features has been released to our on-prem WFA V11 user base. WorthIT Capital, a comprehensive tool for companies to manage their debt portfolio (leases, loans, mortgages & debentures) is at an advanced stage scheduled for release early 2021. And we are progressing on schedule to release the cloud-native version of our flagship WorthIT Fixed Assets applications late 2021.
By expediting this program, our vision of offering businesses a complete and comprehensive suite of modern, cloud-based fixed assets management applications is taking shape. Equally important, the hands-on learning process has positioned us to better advise and support our own consulting client base in cloud development projects.
This program has also spurred the birth of the MRS UI design system. A glimpse of the new design can currently be seen on our new website and, moving forward, all WorthIT apps and MRS content will leverage this beautiful new UI to establish a consistent look and feel to the refreshed MRS brand. Development is also in the works to open-source the MRS UI design system.
Advanced training and formal education
In addition, we have used this period to promote advanced training and formal education for consultants who wish to build knowledge in specialized areas in order to extend and enhance our service offerings for clients. Members of our team are currently enrolled in certification courses in data analytics and data science as well as user experience (UX)/user interface (UI) design programs. Furthermore, we’re continuously pushing forward our skills and expertise across the Microsoft technology stack in order to strengthen our position as a best-in-class Microsoft technology solution provider.
Working diligently to service both new and existing clients
We have continued to maintain a very busy schedule in developing and deploying exciting client project initiatives. As a quick summary, we have recently completed and delivered a mission-critical enterprise data warehouse and business intelligence solution for the Health Insurance Reciprocal of Canada (HIROC) (you can read more about the HIROC project here). Also recently completed is a major SharePoint migration project for the Regional Municipality of York, helping them transfer significant workloads and hundreds of Nintex workflows to a modern, stable SharePoint 2019 environment (you can read more about the York Region project here).
Our current active projects include, amongst others, a recently kick-started new business intelligence initiative for Sofina Foods, a SharePoint application migration for a business unit within TD Bank, a custom SharePoint app development project for NGen, a SharePoint intranet enhancement for the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) Federation and a next stage SharePoint custom development project for Lactanet (Montreal).
Ultimately, we approached the past nine months with the mindset that though the route moving forward may have changed, progress can’t be stopped and aspirations must not be buried. It was not easy. We endured many worrying moments and faced many challenges and uncertainties – as I’m sure most of you have. However, we have worked diligently to adjust to the new norm and the continued commitment our team has shown in the face of adversity makes me more optimistic about the future than ever before.
On behalf of all of us at MRS, we thank you, our valued clients and business partners, for the continued support in working together throughout this crisis.
Merry Christmas, happy holidays and best wishes for the new year.
Alex Perklin, President and CEO, MRS Company Ltd.
