A Digital Transformation that Transforms Lives

Transformations don’t just have to be digital - some have the power to transform lives

My love of construction often translates into analogies in my day to day conversations, so it seems fitting to start with one now. There is an important distinction between laying bricks and building a cathedral. That difference is meaningfulness. Meaningful work feels effortless. We do our best work when we can accomplish the immediate task, in this case, laying a perfect row of bricks, while actively focussing on the greater mission, building a stunning edifice that will last for centuries.

The partnership between The SickKids Foundation and Adaptavist has been both a natural and powerful one, as we both deeply care about transformational work that will benefit generations to come. An incredibly meaningful partnership that saw the first embers of its relationship start to form nearing two decades ago.

A partnership 20 years in the making

While Senior Director of Information Technology in 2003 at Artez, we developed an online fundraising platform, and the SickKids Foundation was one of our early adopters of this innovative tech. Fast forward to 2017, my career had led me to Adaptavist, where I was helping establish our UK based company’s presence in Canada and the USA, as Head of North America Professional Services. It was with great pleasure that I noticed a request from Derek Sutton, Director of Infrastructure and Enterprise Architecture at The SickKids Foundation. His team was looking to relaunch Jira, an issue tracking product by Atlassian that allows agile project management. Our success together in this initial project led to significantly more work to help the Foundation build a new service management system, with Donor Relationships, Brand Strategy, and Legal being the first non-IT teams to adopt Jira Service Management. There was also a parallel initiative to move the Foundation to the Atlassian Cloud to boost system availability, resilience, and remote capabilities, while setting the Foundation up for long-term success as volume, complexity, and distributed work continued to grow.

You can read more about this great work here: https://www.adaptavist.com/blog/itsm-sickkids-foundation-embraces-digital-transformation

A trusted partner

From Day 1, our role has been that of a trusted partner, in the truest sense of the word partner.? We collaborate together, we challenge each other, we work closely side by side. We’ve built trust and we understand each other.? Derek and his team are thought leaders who know their mission and trust that we will also bring our expertise to the table. As Rodolfo Romero, Senior Technical Consultant at Adaptavist, notes: “Having that opportunity to reshape the way our clients work is what excites me to work with Atlassian solutions every day and help teams work better together with tools that will empower them”.?

Many people at Adaptavist have been part of this digital transformation work over the past 4 years. Vitor Fragoso, Consulting Team Lead, is one of our most seasoned experts at Adaptavist. Vitor knows his expertise will leave a lasting impact and is proud when Derek notes: "We’ve managed to reduce the volume of emails for requests and incidents by over 95% in the nine months since we launched." Vitor was key in making this happen. This is not the sole reason for Vitor wanting to be part of this project. As a father of two young children near Toronto, he knows the importance and impact of Toronto-based Hospital for Sick Children on many of the kids, and their families, in our community. For those of us who live and work in the area, we all know someone who has benefitted from the amazing work of the Hospital.

Transformations don’t just have to be digital

Personally, I’ve been involved in many philanthropic activities over the years, ranging from the Ride to Conquer Cancer, Athletes for Africa, Ascent Soccer and most recently with the work to revitalize and reopen Massey Hall. When I come to work, and I know it’s true for Derek, Rodolfo and Vitor as well, we want to leave this world better than we got it.

I’m a strong believer that transformations don’t just have to be digital. Kids’ lives are being transformed by the SickKids Foundation’s work. That’s why this partnership works so well – there’s something bigger that we’re working toward. We’ve all lost a loved one, and no amount of talking about people, process and tools can bring them back. We can apply our knowledge in those three areas though, and give these young beautiful kids a longer, happier and healthier life. That is the most transformational impact we can make.??

On behalf of our team at Adaptavist, I’d like to thank Derek and everyone at the Foundation for the amazing work they do day in and day out to make this happen!

The true value of partnerships

One final thing about our role at Adaptavist as a trusted partner for all our clients. Though I’m a massive Toronto Raptors fan, if I can quote The Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban: “Business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out of a deal.”? I’d like to think our role at Adaptavist is to enjoy this customer journey and provide Derek and the Foundation tangible value for many more years to come, as we do with all our customers.?

If you would like to support the amazing work that the SickKids Foundation does, please donate here: https://secure.sickkidsfoundation.com/donate