Our Clients: Pacific Rim College

Jordan Wald, Director of IT at Pacific Rim College in Victoria, BC, won’t hesitate to tell you that Oak Bay Softrends is always focused on your organization’s best interests. He knows, through painful experience, just how crucial it is to have a technology partner that can be trusted.

“If you need a professional that is going to look out for you, and prioritize your needs even if you don’t feel you know all your needs — they’re the ones,” says Wald.

Wald started his position at Pacific Rim College in May 2020 — already a stressful time due to COVID-19 — knowing that he would be troubleshooting everyday tech issues, leading projects to adopt new technologies, and serving as the campus-wide IT department. But he was also tasked with transitioning the school away from a vendor who had custom-built the school’s FileMaker database. In essence, this database was the school; it was used daily in every area of administration and operations. Loss of, or damage to, the database would certainly have catastrophically impacted the school’s ability to function in both the short- and long-term.

Unfortunately, the original vendor was uncooperative with the planned transition, and the age of the database put some hard limits on where the student portal could be hosted. When Wald contacted Oak Bay Softrends, they were faced with an unusual and challenging vendor transition, with a lot of potential for missteps and impact on daily operations. Oak Bay’s sensitive attention to detail, business relationships, and mission-critical priorities kept the complicated project on track. What could have been a fairly uncomfortable process instead became a cooperative journey both technically and logistically.

“OBSI had the foresight to know what would be important, what should be done and in what order, and how to communicate with different members of the team including those without a technical background. Steven Barer would often say ‘we’re here to take care of your needs and make sure everything goes right.’” Wald says. “They really delivered.”

When it was time for Wald to move on in his career, he chose to tackle custom software projects full time with Oak Bay Softrends.