Information and Refferal Center of Greater Montréal (CRGM) is a nonprofit organization that manages several services, including 211 Greater Montreal, an information and referral center for community and social resources. Commissioned by the City of Montreal, the CRGM plays a key role as the service provider for the Mobile Mediation and Social Intervention Team (ÉMMIS), a service deployed across the city’s 19 boroughs. The ÉMMIS call center ensures coordinated and efficient handling of requests.
The collaboration between Nexus Innovations and the CRGM is part of an effort to modernize the technological tools used by mobile intervention teams, aiming to replace a fragmented solution with a more robust, integrated application tailored to the realities on the ground.
Indeed, the mandate was to deploy a unified, flexible, and scalable application that improves the flow of daily operations and the geolocation of field teams, while enabling structured collaboration with partners.
Business objectives: centralize, automate, and secure
The objectives were defined during the scoping phase and focused primarily on operational efficiency. The CRGM wanted to provide its teams of advisors with a centralized tool that was more accurate and better suited to their needs, in order to speed up team assignments and reduce errors associated with using multiple systems. More accurate geolocation was central to these needs, as it allows for faster deployment of responders and enables their precise location when an incident occurs. Role-based access management complemented these objectives to ensure that each person has the right information at the right time.
Solution: A model-driven app with an integrated map and automatic assignment
Nexus Innovations has developed a model-driven application that centralizes requests, service calls, teams, and vendors within a data model tailored to the needs of the 211 service.
The solution handles the creation of requests, their assignment to response teams based on geolocation, and the reporting of response progress. It leverages Traccar, Azure Maps, and Dataverse/Power Apps to provide user-friendly mapping and enable the automatic assignment of requests to the nearest available team.
Designed with a data structure that facilitates data extraction and analysis, the solution also aims to support collaboration with partners and the City of Montreal team. It thus replaces manual processes, particularly phone calls between partners, with an automated assignment mechanism based on proximity, availability, and the teams’ service areas.
Impact: Shorter lead times and delighted field teams
Before the project, when a request was received, the people in charge had to consult multiple tools and sometimes contact different teams to confirm their availability and proximity. This manual process caused significant delays, in a context where rapid response is essential between the receipt of a request and the deployment of a team in the field.
With the implementation of the new application, this delay has been significantly reduced. Automatic assignment now makes it possible to instantly identify the most appropriate available team, based on clear rules regarding proximity, availability, and territory.
In addition, centralizing data within a single tool, reducing interactions between multiple systems, and implementing appropriate security profiles have helped reduce data entry errors, duplicates, and unnecessary data manipulation. Coordinators and management teams now have a more reliable, comprehensive overview, which facilitates operational monitoring and decision-making.
Finally, feedback from field users has been very positive. As early as the first month following deployment, the CRGM reported enthusiastic reactions, describing the solution as a significant improvement over previous practices. Teams particularly highlighted the tool’s simplicity and its alignment with their operational reality.
We’ve already received feedback from users, and WOW, their feedback has been overwhelmingly positive!
Michelle Ste-Marie, EMMIS Project Manager at CRGM
Adoption: Exemplary Change Management at CRGM
The solution’s rapid adoption was largely due to the CRGM’s sustained commitment throughout the project. Its highly engaged project manager assembled a group of super users who played a key role in validating, testing, and rolling out the solution.
Nexus trained this core group, which then assisted the project manager in training the field teams. Test feedback was centralized, prioritized, and communicated effectively, allowing critical issues to be addressed quickly while staying within budget and schedule constraints.
The project also highlighted certain challenges, particularly regarding the initial testing strategy, which had to be adjusted during implementation. With a view to continuous improvement, the CRGM demonstrated transparency and candor during the post-mortem, sharing constructive feedback on the experience.
This collaboration, marked by goodwill and openness, allowed Nexus to gain concrete insights and improve its support methodology, particularly during the testing phase, to enhance the quality of deliverables in future projects.
A partnership based on transparency and trust
The project was carried out in a spirit of collaboration, openness, and transparency. The CRGM demonstrated remarkable responsiveness and commitment, facilitating decision-making and communication, even when sensitive issues had to be addressed.
On the Nexus side, the team’s transparency and candor helped build a strong atmosphere of trust.
The CRGM also highlighted the Nexus team’s responsiveness, flexibility, and kindness, noting that they did not hesitate to go the extra mile when necessary.
Project Team
To bring this project to fruition, Nexus assembled a team specializing in the Power Platform and agile delivery. Project management and client relations were handled by:
- Alicia Villeneuve, Project Manager
- Lyamine Benkhadra, M365 Power Platform Specialist
- Dominic Larochelle, Power Platform Specialist and Acting Product Owner
- Nancy Ayito, Power Platform Specialist
On the CRGM side, the project team, including ÉMMIS Manager Michelle Ste-Marie, ÉMMIS Coordinator Danicka Raymond, and IT Analyst Williams Fotso Tassimo, played a key role in the project’s success and in the rapid adoption of the solution by more than a hundred users.
