TLC CDAP

The Little Campus digital adoption plan helps it visualize a future-ready solution to meet the challenges of its industry.

Client

The Little Campus (TLC) is a private early childhood education centre in South Etobicoke, Ontario, offering premium services to families who desire the best care and learning experience for their children.

Brief

TLC applied to the Boost Your Business Technology stream of the Canada Digital Adoption program (CDAP) for an opportunity to receive the following: 

1. A grant of up to $15,000 covering 90% of the costs for a digital adoption plan developed by a registered digital advisor (me);

2. Up to $100,000 in interest-free loans from the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) to help implement their digital adoption plan;

3. And up to $7,300 to fund work placements for students or recent graduates to help grow through digital adoption.

Challenge

TLC applies a digital-first approach to its operations, benefiting from the owner's deep technology experience (having already built and sold three technology startups). It manages a combination of on-premise and cloud applications and plans to use the BDC loan to upgrade to a fully-integrated cloud infrastructure.

Strategy

TLC had developed custom applications as needed and when no substitutes were available and wanted to unify its digital ecosystem. Its digital adoption plan recommends grouping functionality into microservices and unifying them through interfaces. A microservice design keeps TLC's infrastructure agile and more flexible to manage and upgrade.

TLC's plan recommends a two-pronged approach to accomplish its goals. Initially, use sector-specific cloud applications (Brightwheel or Himama) while developing its custom application. The strength of these solutions is how fast TLC can begin using them, which makes them excellent MVP (minimum viable product) solutions that act as a stopgap while TLC develops its custom-developed application.

Results

TLC's implementation roadmap includes work plans with a corresponding timeline, identified dependencies, technology and implementation costs for each recommendation. 

In addition to reviewing Brightwheel and Himama, the plan maps out the microservices, including prime functions and APIs. And a table compares each alternative's strengths, challenges, costs and time-to-launch.