The SmartSimple Blog

A while back, we wrote about how our CommonCV functionality made life easier for researchers. As a company built around technological innovation, we knew that was just the start. Today, academic researchers who are applying for funding from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) can access the AGRIC ultural O n L ine A ccess (AGRICOLA) and index the catalog directly from the United States Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Library. This means that they can easily find publications to attach to their CVs with a few clicks of the mouse, rather than having to manually enter the details for multiple publications. This also ensures that the integrity of the data, as it is coming from a single source in a consistent format. This latest integration of a large database into SmartSimple is pretty cool for a few reasons: 1.  The integration saves the researcher from having to go back and forward between the OMAFRA’s SmartSimple research portal a...

This is the first of a multiple part series. As is often the case, whenever I meet someone new, the conversation inevitably turns towards employments. When asked what I do, I sometimes reply that I’m a Business Analyst for SmartSimple Software Inc . More often than not, this response is registered as nice to know and the conversation proceeds to other areas. Other times, I would provide a more focused answer along the lines of “I work for a company that provides software as a service”, because SaaS is so commonly used this response generally elicits a follow up question along the lines of…”so what do you guys actually do?”. “Well” I answer “We’ve developed a platform for enterprise that contains functional applications”, most times this answer is more or less ignored but occasionally I get responses from “I’ve heard of SaaS but I don’t understand what it means” to a flat out “You’re going to have to explain that to me”. What I always find interesting is that near 100% of the part...

The ability of the Internet to facilitate communication and collaboration within an enterprise is nothing new. Back in the day, the Internet as we know it did not exist. By our current standards, information and data moved at a snail’s pace and the security standards simply did not exist. As a result, companies needed to have their own “private” internets known as intranets. This clearly required massive investments and was not easily accessed by ‘remote users’. As broadband grew and security increased, it slowly became the case that the capabilities of the internet met and likely exceeded the capability of many intranets – and this does not even consider the scalability of the modern Internet. The irony (reluctantly used incorrectly) is that the term intranet was understood to refer to internal functionality and usage rather than the actual infrastructure used to support it. So the million dollar question is… If solutions like SmartSimple can provide workflow manageme...

As far back as the 60s, visionaries touted technology as the means to the paperless office. Today, anyone who works in an office can attest to the fact that these visions have never fully materialized. For countless reasons, most modern offices still have photocopiers and printers which are used many times a day. At the same time, courier services of all types are rushing around hardcopy documents. The latter point begs the question: IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE A PAPERLESS OFFICE WITHOUT HAVING PAPERLESS COMMUNITIES? At the core of SmartSimple’s platform is the desire to enable effective community management and engagement of businesses and organizations alike. A core aspect of engaging with ones community is knowing who one deals with. Before implementing SmartSimple, many grant makers would receive hardcopy applications that must be copied and redistributed to program managers, reviewers and so on. The contact information would be entered into some sort of database and the applican...

Despite being of central importance to any business or organization, encryption and security is best described as a cat and mouse game. Recent press attention paid to the flaws of SSL certification and HTTPS:// websites highlight that a system's security should not be taken for granted . Perhaps more importantly, putting all your eggs in a single piece of security is hardly a guarantee that they won’t break. Because our success is dependent on, amongst other things, the security of our system, we are constantly looking for ways to protect our clients from any rogue threats. We have a long list of security credentials, from actual encryption to process audits (CICA 5970 / SAS 70), and we are excited to extend that list by welcoming TWO-FACTOR Authentication to the SmartSimple family of security measures. While primarily geared to our clients dealing with confidential and/or especially valuable information, TWO-FACTOR Authentication can add extra peace of mind to any SmartSimpl...

SmartSimple is used to address specific business needs in several verticals, but at a high level it has always been used by our customers to engage with their community. This may refer to  insurance carriers engaging with medical examiners around motor vehicle accidents or grant making organizations engaging with their applicants and reviewers around funding for research or community programs. Over the years we have always been interested in how many people actively use SmartSimple worldwide, but this was more curiosity than a business need. As interest in adopting SmartSimple’s technology grows the need to calculate total active users has begun to present its self. So how many users are there? We were thinking that 100,000 users was a fair guess…but when we ran the numbers we ended up with 409,747 as of April 20 th 2011!  Who knew?” And what does this mean? Well, it means that around decade after being born out of a  U of T incubator, SmartSimple is a stable and s...

From teens on Facebook to SaaS adoption, everyone is going online. For some organizations the motivation for SaaS adoption is the inherent cost savings, for others it is the ability to access their work from any computer with a connection to the internet. Regardless of the motivation, smart decisions are what will ultimately make a software investment worthwhile. As a software vendor we have listened to the needs of countless grant makers and have been able to draw a few key considerations. By ensuring that the following are some of your top criteria, you'll have a useful system and not a headache that requires your attention day in and day out. 1. Flexibility: This is perhaps the single most important factor in selecting a grants management software solution. All software vendors know that a grants lifecylce typically begins with an LOI and ends with some sort of outcomes assessment, but only a select few understand that there are many ways to get from A to B. To this end...