Sault's IT roster strengthened.While Northern Ontario Northern Ontario is the part of the province of Ontario which lies north of Lake Huron (including Georgian Bay), the French River and Lake Nipissing. Northern Ontario has a land area of 802,000 km² (310,000 mi²) and constitutes 87% of the land area of Ontario, although it mayors were collectively plotting in mid-September on how to shift more development from southern Ontario to the North, a Toron-to-area information technology firm was doing just that. WorkGroup Designs Inc., a Concord, Ont.-based management consulting Noun 1. management consulting - a service industry that provides advice to those in charge of running a business service industry - an industry that provides services rather than tangible objects firm, announced in August it was setting up its research and development division in Sault Ste. Marie Sault Sainte Marie — pronounced "Soo Saint Marie" (IPA /su seɪnt məˈɹi/) — is the name of two cities on the Saint Marys River, which forms part of the boundary between the United States and Canada. , the home-town of company president Lori Rain-one. Supported by a $350,000-repayable contribution from FedNor, plus $100,000 from IRAP IRAP Industrial Research Assistance Program (National Research Council, Canada) IRAP Imposta Regionale sulle Attività Produttive (Italy) IRAP Interleukin-1 Receptor Antagonist Protein (Industrial Research Assistance Program) to continue developing some specialty software, the company's arrival is being heralded as a major building block for the city's knowledge-based economy. "This company has a wide open future," says research and development director Gary Spinks, the company's first local hire, who came aboard July 21. "We're coming up with three known products and a lot of desire in expanding those products and finding new ones." The Sault office will be primarily working on further development of an existing line of their specialized management software products, which include Juggler juggler Entertainer who keeps several plates, knives, balls, or other objects in the air at once by tossing and catching them. The art of juggling has been practiced since antiquity. Staff Scheduling, Suit-CASE and QMATS (Quality Management and Tracking). Their flagship product is Juggler Staff Scheduler, a Windows-based staff scheduling tool used predominately by blood banks across North America to organize blood drives. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "We're thinking it has potential beyond blood banking," says Spinks, "to any organization with full- and part-time shift work and many different parametres. It's a powerful tool to help do completely automated and fast scheduling." SuitCASE, a case management software tool, is used mainly in social service and managed health care organizations in Canada, but the company is focussed on the larger North American North American named after North America. North American blastomycosis see North American blastomycosis. North American cattle tick see boophilusannulatus. market. QMATS, Quality Management and Tracking, is a quality assurance monitoring tool addressing ISO standards. Spinks, a former IT instructor at Algoma University College Algoma University College is a postsecondary institution in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, offering undergraduate university degrees in more than 25 academic programs. Algoma is currently an affiliated college of Laurentian University in Sudbury. , whose back-ground includes health administration and information systems for the U.S. military, first learned about Work-Group Designs through connections with the city's Innovation Centre, where he served as a board member. This past spring, Rainone delivered a presentation at the centre, noting the concern that if they were to relocate in the city to take advantage of FedNor and IRAP funding, would there be enough high-tech personnel to make it worth their while. Spinks came away impressed and he ended up being recruited by Rainone. With three product developers already on the payroll, the company expects to quickly staff up to 10 to 12. They were expecting to release the latest version of Juggler 2.02 in mid-September and by late October have prepared the third version in time for a trade show in Baltimore. It has been an eventful year for the company, which announced in July it had cracked the $3-million revenue mark with net earnings of $112,566, compared to a $181,467-loss the year before. Revenue had jumped about 82 per cent from the previous year, the highest-performance in the 10-year history of the company. Their client base includes five Ontario government ministries, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, the American Red Cross American Red Cross: see Red Cross. , the City of Thunder Bay, Royal LePage, Bank of Montreal “BMO” redirects here. For the mathematics competition, see British Mathematical Olympiad. Bank of Montreal/Banque de Montréal (TSX: BMO, NYSE: BMO) is Canada's fourth largest bank[1], and is classified as a Domestic Chartered Bank (Schedule I). , the Canadian Blood Service and a number of U.S. blood bank centres stretching from Maine to Los Angeles. www.workgroupdesigns.co By IAN ROSS Northern Ontario Business Northern Ontario Business is a Canadian magazine, which publishes monthly in Greater Sudbury, Ontario. The magazine covers business news and issues in Northern Ontario. |
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