La SPA
Digitalization of the core business
The SPA, French society for the protection of animals, overhauled Argos, its business application, which is essential for the management of its operations.
Since 2015, SQLI has been supporting the SPA (Société Protectrice des Animaux) in the redesign and development of its business application, Argos. This digital platform brings together all the actions carried out by the association’s employees and the data generated by their actions.
ARGOS thus represents the nerve centre of the SPA’s activities.
Challenges
An essential application for the operations of the SPA.
The SPA’s previous operations management tool was 15 years old and had become obsolete. The organization turned to SQLI for its functional and ergonomic overhaul.
The new foundation contains the various management modules, which enable the animal shelters and head office to coordinate the organization’s operations (management of the animals, people, treatments, transfers, accounts, etc.).
For SQLI, the main objectives were to provide a high-performance, reliable and available platform. Availability was a major requirement, in order to ensure constant support for employees in carrying out their daily tasks. It was also essential to ensure reliability, in order to generate quality data, which would then be consolidated and centralized.
An upgradeable application
In order to ensure coherency with the SPA’s Microsoft ecosystem, SQLI developed Argos with the .NET MVC technology and the new platform is hosted on Azure. Developments were then followed by corrective and perfective maintenance.
Following several years of use, ergonomic and functional upgrades, including the addition of new modules (management of volunteers, animal abuse investigations and partnerships with local authorities), are underway.
SQLI is also working on an artificial intelligence project. In order to help the SPA’s employees and volunteers enter data related to animals received at the shelters, SQLI’s teams used a cognitive model to train an AI to automatically recognize the breed, species and several other animal characteristics.
A unifying application
Thanks to the overhaul of Argos, data is available in real time from any animal shelter, making it easier to share information. Data contained in Argos is also sent to the showcase website for the general public via an API, in order to input information into the animal adoption section.
Argos was transformed from an application that was showing its age to a central tool for the SPA, embraced by all users. Not only are automation and digitalization facilitating the work of staff and volunteers (time savings and reduced administrative workload, reduction of the risk of errors) and standardizing work methods, they are increasing the feeling of belonging and engagement in the organization.
The entire organization is united around a shared tool.
“A genuine relationship of trust has been established with SQLI, which has become an essential partner. The teams demonstrate professionalism and responsiveness, they know how to adapt to our priorities. We are fortunate to be supported by the SQLI teams.“