Whitecap Canada

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of IT for Hazelview Properties, a property management organization. We are approximately the third largest property manager for residential properties across all of Canada.
 

What challenge were you trying to address with Whitecap Canada?

We wanted to build out the intranet for our organization using SharePoint.
 

What was the scope of their involvement?

The initial part of the engagement was the requirements gathering process where we described our needs. Whitecap Canada provided a project plan and then we began the development exercise until it was completed. 

It was a custom software development — the intranet was built on the out-of-the-box SharePoint platform, then customized by Whitecap Canada to meet our needs. In terms of documentation, we provided them with our initial scope or requirements document, which we worked through and further refined and finalized.

What is the team composition?

We primarily interacted with three different individuals. Aside from the VP of sales development, we interacted with the project manager and two developers.

How did you come to work with Whitecap Canada?

We started with an RFP process and Whitecap Canada ended up being shortlisted. Upon interviews with a shortlist of providers or vendors, we ended up choosing them. 

I already knew Whitecap Canada, because I had worked there approximately 10 years ago. I started their SharePoint practice — in fact, one of the team members assigned to our project was my first hire there. Above and beyond, they were very competitive, and they had a great resume as it relates to SharePoint. My familiarity and experience with working with their lead developer over the years solidified them winning the project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested approximately $90,000 with Whitecap Canada.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around September of 2020 and launched in June of 2021, so the project is live now. We did have a three-month interruption while we were migrating from one office 365 to another, which put the project on hold briefly. 
 

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Since we launched the platform, we have had more than 200 unique users on it every day. With how our organization is structured, this accounts for about 75% of our team interacting with the new intranet on a daily basis.

We also migrated about one terabyte worth of data from our traditional file-sharing system to the new platform. Eventually, we look to migrate all our files, which would give us a savings monthly of about $1,200.

Prior to the new SharePoint platform, a lot of our team had serious issues with their VPN that required technical help. Since our move, we’ve seen 50–100 fewer help desk tickets each month. 

We also were able to decentralize our document security. Instead of our IT team having to fully manage security for every little folder in our traditional file share, we were able to decentralize that and allow each of our regions to manage the security of their files. Once again, this reduced our monthly help desk ticket count by about 50.

The new platform has also allowed us to centralize communication for the organization. We're located all across Canada, and communication informing the team about a new hire, departures, or an event was traditionally done through email. Although we would reach a part of our audience in an effective time period, other teammates would read those emails late and miss out on that particular news item or notification that we were trying to send. We've now moved all of that to the platform that Whitecap Canada built. With our current viewership, we feel that we're now much better positioned to have a centralized and uniform communication to the organization.

As part of the platform, we publish a lot of training content, policies, procedures, and documents that are relevant to the organization. Because they're in a single location and there's only one version of the document, it has increased our accuracy from everything, from operations, and the training aspects of what we do.

We have started to create an on-demand and self-service model where people can go onto the platform and seek the news, the files, and the training materials they're looking for and not have to spend hours and hours looking for, or asking other team members for that information.

This is phase one of where we're headed with the platform, but we're quite happy with the outcome. We have a good audience and it increases as our audience goes up daily.
Again, it started to change the culture to focus a lot more on self-service. The centralized ability to communicate to the organization on a single platform has been extremely beneficial.

Finally, allowing document management and document security to be decentralized to our regional managers, as sort of been the goal of that initial phase.

At this point in time, we're quite happy with where we are.

How did Whitecap Canada perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed very well in project management. Having come from that organization, one of the biggest pros of working with Whitecap Canada is the transparency at the project management level both from work being done as well as the budget.

We met with them weekly for project status updates, and they were always 100% transparent on what exactly was happening in terms of timelines, scope, and budget. This was extremely beneficial for making the most out of our collaboration. We communicated primarily through Microsoft teams.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was most impressed with their flexibility.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would have liked it if they were a bit more proactive when it came to providing documentation. However, we would always get documentation when we asked them for it.

Any advice for potential customers?

Have a well-thought-out scope of the project and requirements ahead of the engagement.
 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re Whitehots Inc., a library service provider. I’m the president of the company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Whitecap Canada?

We were dealing with older technology on our website, which is highly used. It’s a web application for our customers. We were looking to leave our current provider and rebuild the site with new technology.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We have a complicated website with a database of about 10 million units. There’s also a lot of customization for our larger customers within the site. Whitecap’s scope of work was to re-engineer the site from the ground up with newer programming language.

Significant features included the display of the seasonal list we distribute to all our customers. They also did design work and launched the new site. Rebranding was also part of their job, including redoing our marketing page.

What is the team composition?

We worked closely with four team members and contacted 7-8 throughout the whole process.

How did you come to work with Whitecap Canada?

I found them through a Google search.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent over $600,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from December 2018 until December 2019.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The number one thing was the budget, number two was the timeline, and number three was customer feedback. The overall feedback we’ve received has been extremely positive.

How did Whitecap Canada perform from a project management standpoint?

They worked at a high level. We were assigned a project manager, who we were in communication with weekly. They gave us insight into their progress and performance against budget. Their investment in the project, both in time and getting to know our company and customers, was very impressive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their commitment to the project stands out. They were as passionate about it as we were and understood it’s importance to our business.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There wasn’t anything significant.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Take advantage of their overall experience in programming and design. You have to get the whole team involved. They’re a great company to deal with.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and CRO of IXACT Contact Solutions Inc.

What challenge were you trying to address with Whitecap Canada?

We needed a partner for software design and development to help us design and architect and program from scratch a CRM solution for realtors.

What was the scope of their involvement?

First, we had a discovery process to identify our design and requirements. Then, we moved into development and testing and QA. From my experience, Whitecap is simply the best company I’ve ever worked with at web-based application design, development, and integration.

Their core developers are very strong. A key part of our technology infrastructure includes Microsoft Exchange and they’ve got deep skills on the Exchange side of things. They were also building a mobile app for iOS and Android; those skills were outstanding too.

What is the team composition?

One of the great things about working with Whitecap is the range of expertise they bring to a project, everything from UI designers, graphic designers, database architects, and more.

How did you come to work with Whitecap Canada?

I had a prior business connection with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $1,000,000–$5,000,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from fall 2007 until 2009.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The entire business has sprung from their work; we’ve been extraordinarily successful. From launching about ten-and-a-half-years ago to becoming one of the top real estate CRMs in North American. One of the main reasons is because we have an exceptional project. It’s well-thought-out, well-designed, and the interface is truly intuitive, which you can’t say about a lot of other CRMs. It’s full-featured and robust as well — a rock-solid piece of software. All this I can attribute to Whitecap.

Since we launched, the product has evolved and expanded tremendously; the original is a fraction of what we provide today. It’s still as easy to use today as it was then, though, just with more automation and functionality.

How did Whitecap Canada perform from a project management standpoint?

It’s excellent. They have mature processes.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their discovery process was called ERAD (electronic requirements and design) and it’s a big differentiator for them. Lots of software companies start writing code before they’ve really understood and mapped out those use cases. Whitecap has built a real expertise doing that design phase for over 20 years.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not really, to be honest. We’re very happy with our partnership. If there was anything we’d want them to improve we’d handle that privately.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work at an entertainment company that specializes in horse racing. We own two race tracks, and we host casinos at those properties. We also have 60 off-track betting locations throughout our area and have an online betting platform.

What challenge were you trying to address with Whitecap Canada?

We first hired Whitecap to help us build our online betting platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped build our online platform and write the rules for online betting for horse races in Canada. It’s a custom .NET application that interfaces with systems in the racing industry.

Once we developed that platform, we entered a support agreement with them. At the time, they didn’t offer ongoing support services, but they created the service for us.  They’ve rebuilt the site several times to provide updates. 

What is the team composition?

There are three team members that are dedicated to our platform.

How did you come to work with Whitecap Canada?

My company started working with them before I started in my position. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spend around $200,000 each year. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them about 18 years ago. I started working with my company 15 years ago, so the relationship predates me. Our relationship with them is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

There are a few KPIs that we keep track of. We look at uptime metrics, and our SLA around uptime is about 99.9%. We also measure response time using New Relic. Additionally, we’ve been able to sell the product they developed as a SaaS solution. 

How did Whitecap Canada perform from a project management standpoint?

For our maintenance agreement, our solution architect is also our project manager. We use an agile methodology. We have designated project managers for each individual project we work on with them. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

We don’t have to worry about their work or constantly check that they’re on track. They just get it. They feel like an extension of our in-house team. We have a fairly large in-house IT department. With other partners, we struggled with collaboration between our team and the vendor. We can brainstorm and find solutions together. 

Are there any areas they could improve? 

I’d like to see them grow and start offering more services. Our team is working on some projects with new technologies, and we’d love to collaborate with them on that as well. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers? 

Being involved in the project is important. You want to understand what they’re working on and get feedback from them on strategy.