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March 12, 2021

Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia gains insights and automation with Dynamics 365

Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia (ISSofBC) aids new Canadians in their pursuit of an integrated, productive life in British Columbia. In an effort to better understand each of the thousands of people who take advantage of its services, ISSofBC adopted Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. ISSofBC’s objective was to build a solution that provided greater data visibility, real-time analytics, and a more comprehensive, 360-degree view of each client.

Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia

“With Dynamics 365, we not only now have a consistent view of our clients, we have a consistent data capture system. We have a single, intuitive system that we train our employees on, and we have real-time data available for management and staff to both service our clients and assure accurate reporting to our stakeholders.”

Parm Sandhu, Program Director for Digital Transformation Engagement and Acting CIO, Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia

Moving away from one’s home country is a massive, life-changing undertaking. People immigrating to British Columbia, Canada, for instance, are often in need of settlement services, employment services, educational resources, and help learning the local language. The Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia (ISSofBC) was established to meet these needs and more. 

During an average year, 20,000 new Canadians make use of the organization’s services, visiting one of 13 brick-and-mortar locations spread across the Vancouver area. Because the organization bases its services upon the guiding principle that each individual’s path to integration and self-sufficiency must be based on a recognition and acceptance of that person’s unique needs and aspirations, ISSofBC is always looking for ways to better understand each person it assists. “A year ago, we saw the need to break down our data silos,” recalls Parm Sandhu, Program Director for Digital Transformation Engagement and Acting CIO at ISSofBC. “At the time, though we were providing a wide array of services, we didn’t have the visibility required to create a 360-degree view of each person accessing those services.” 

With this goal in mind, ISSofBC contacted the digital transformation experts at ITK Consulting. Together, the two organizations began to identify the platform that would best fit ISSofBC’s needs. The technology selection process was methodical. It involved each of ISSofBC’s lines of business and tracked all existing workflows. They even considered each solution’s potential to evolve into other areas of the business for future modernization efforts. 

“We weren’t looking specifically to move to the cloud,” says Sandhu. “What we wanted was a solution that could help us enhance our workflows, allow us to aggregate data from multiple disparate applications, enable our employees to work from anywhere, and grant us the ability to provide real-time data analytics, reporting, and self-service functionality for our clients and volunteers. The technologies that best meet those needs are Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365.” 

A solution designed to increase understanding

The chief functionality that ISSofBC needed was a powerful customer relationship management (CRM) solution. This ask was easily met by Dynamics 365, which at its core provides a centralized, automated home for client data. “Foundationally, the CRM capabilities of Dynamics 365 gave ISSofBC a holistic view of each of its clients, regardless of what programs or services they were making use of,” says Doug McLachlan, Partner and Vice President of Professional Services at ITK Consulting. 

For the first time, ISSofBC was able to easily view and track the immigration journey of each of its clients. “We could see if someone had started off in settlement services, then moved to language classes, and from there to employment,” says Sandhu. “If you had asked us to provide that view a year ago, it would have taken a lot of time and effort. It just wasn’t something we had at our disposal.” 

Next, ISSofBC and ITK Consulting used Microsoft Power Apps, part of Microsoft Power Platform, to create a series of bespoke apps for specific employee groups. Language teachers, for instance, were given a different app than caseworkers in the settlement department. These apps granted employees easier access to the data that they need to complete their work, while simultaneously assuring that client data is only accessible by those who need it. 

“Using Power Apps to customize the user experience for our different communities was very powerful,” says Sandhu. “We knew it would increase transparency, especially at the management level and for reporting. We also gained the data security inherent to Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 for our client populations. Due to the nature of the data we are dealing with, every additional layer of security we can enable is important.” 

Increased accessibility through automation

Along with the core benefit of a unified view of each client, ISSofBC has gained a lot from the increased automation offered by Dynamics 365. In the past, much of the reporting the organization was required to complete had been done manually. Employees would spend hours signing into each siloed application and then extracting, aggregating, and consolidating the information required by federal and provincial agencies. It was a process Sandhu saw as unsustainable. “We had employees tied up doing these reports,” he recalls. “It was important work, because tracking and reporting our client interactions to the government is how we receive funding.” 

For the organization to grow, the reporting process needed to be modernized. “With Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, we not only now have a consistent view of our clients, we have a consistent data capture system,” says Sandhu. “We have a single, intuitive system that we train our employees on, and we have real-time data available for management and staff to both service our clients and assure accurate reporting to our stakeholders.” 

Adaptability in any circumstance

By early March of 2020, ISSofBC had its custom apps built using Power Apps and its solution ready to deploy. All that was left to do was to train its employees and bring the new features live by April. However, as COVID-19 worsened, the organization needed to pivot quickly, away from in-person training and toward remote education. Training sessions were moved to Microsoft Teams, where employees shared assets and learned together. 

Though the organization had been using Microsoft 365 for years, Teams usage had never been made a priority. “We began using Teams when the employees finishing up our Power Apps solutions began working remotely,” says Sandhu. “By the time we had moved to training and adoption, everyone was learning in Teams. Today, we view it as a key, integral part of ISSofBC.” 

On April 1, as planned, ISSofBC went live with Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform. “Looking back, I’m so glad we moved to Dynamics 365 when we did,” recalls Sandhu. “The SaaS model allowed us to adapt to implications resulting from COVID-19 and allowed us to continue to serve our clients remotely.” 

Easing the way forward, for everyone

ISSofBC has already begun using its newly unified data to better understand its clients, including correlations between where they came from and their probable needs. As this data increases in volume over time, the organization hopes to use it to improve its services, potentially expanding into new areas of immigrant needs and improving how existing services are delivered. “Ultimately, we want to understand things like how long it takes people to progress through each level of language acquisition, on average,” says Sandhu. “Is there a way we can use our data to condense that timeline?” 

Correlations between points of entry and key required skills are also important. “If there’s a correlation between people coming from certain areas and their need for language services, for instance, we can anticipate increased demand for those services when greater numbers of immigrants arrive from that region,” continues Sandhu. “With Dynamics 365, we’ve got the visibility to do that sort of forward-leaning planning now, and I think that’s something a lot of our peers will be interested in gaining in the near future as well.” 

Through Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, ISSofBC has crafted a solution that allows its employees to better serve British Columbia’s immigrant population through a refined understanding of each individual’s unique needs. As time goes on, the increased data and insights the organization garners could aid in the delivery of accelerated education and aid for Canada’s newest citizens, along with broader availability of the important services ISSofBC provides. 

Find out more about Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

“Using Power Apps to customize the user experience for our different communities was very powerful. We knew it would increase transparency, especially at the management level and for reporting. We also gained the data security inherent to Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 for our client populations.”

Parm Sandhu, Program Director for Digital Transformation Engagement and Acting CIO, Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia

Beginning September 1, 2023, Dynamics 365 Marketing and Dynamics 365 Customer Insights will merge into a single offering under Dynamics 365 Customer Insights. Learn more about the evolution of Dynamics 365 Customer Insights by visiting here.

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