The Ontario Nurses Association has dispensed some bedside manner to the systems that track its membership information.
Later this month the ONA will relaunch the system, which handles records for more than 70,000 nurses and tracks
the payment of dues for the roughly 60,000 that maintain their monthly membership.
ONA president Lesley Bell said ongoing problems with the member information system had plagued the organization for a year and a half.
“”It was just corrupt data,”” she said. “”We were getting a lot of problems with the accuracy and the duplication of records.””
A six-month project to revamp the system, however, revealed that the hardware and software didn’t have much do with it, said Romel Romualdo, president of Toronto-based IT Moguls, which the ONA brought in to help.
“”Eighty per cent of the problems were people-related,”” he said. “”The systems issues were the minor part.””
The ONA employs six in-house IT people, but they weren’t proving responsive to the day-to-day problems the organization faced, Bell said.
“”I think it had a lot to do with lack of leadership and team development,”” she said. “”The previous leader had left and there wasn’t an IT expert within the organization that could take over the management of the department.””
IT Moguls brought in outside help to manage the operation while providing training to the internal staff, Romualdo said, to adopt more of a “”service provider culture.””
Bell brought in IT Moguls for an assessment of the ONA’s IT operation last fall, then sent a proposal to her board of directors which gave the go-ahead to hire the firm in January.
Romualdo said IT Moguls, which was founded in July of 2002 by a trio of IT executives from the financial services industry, brings in contract entrepreneurs (called Moguls or “”corpreneurs””) for each project to apply their technological and organizational solutions that best meet the needs of its clients.
“”When we did it, most of our friends were saying, “”Guys, the IT industry is down,'”” he said. “”But look at the market out there — there are still areas where IT is growing, and professional services is one of them. If you can just identify the value you’re going to bring the clients, you’re going to get it.””
Bell said she has extended her initial contract so that IT Moguls can help the ONA with some database work.
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