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Why We’re Making Time to Listen
After a decade of listening to municipal IT leaders, we’re opening up a chair for yours.
As Perry Group heads into its tenth year, we’ve been looking back at the conversations that shaped the firm. Our consultants have sat across the table from IT directors, CAOs and department leaders in more than 300 municipalities across Canada. Most of those conversations started with a project, such as an ERP review, a digital strategy or a business continuity plan, and many of them turned into something more.
The conversation behind the project
Somewhere in the middle of a discovery meeting, the agenda usually gives way. A director talks through the system that’s been patched for years, the council question with no clean answer yet, or the vacancy that’s been open since spring. More than once, a client has wrapped up a meeting by telling us it felt a bit like a therapy session.
We take that as high praise, and we understand why it happens. Municipal technology leaders are the people everyone else brings their problems to. They rarely get the chance to talk through their own with someone who knows the job.
Why we created A Problem Halved
That feedback stayed with us. Our team is made up of former municipal IT leaders, CAOs and service managers, and we know how much clearer a problem looks once you’ve said it out loud to someone who has carried the same weight. So we decided to offer that conversation on its own terms, separate from any project or procurement.
A Problem Halved is a complimentary, confidential 60 minute session with a Perry Group advisor. You bring one challenge and we listen. Then we work through it together, looking at what you can do now and what may take longer.
What happens with what you share
Where we can help right away, we will. That might mean practical options, examples from other municipalities, or a short note afterward that captures what we heard and the options we discussed.
Some challenges point to something bigger that many municipalities are still working through. When that happens, we note the pattern with every identifying detail removed, and we use it to shape the guides, tools and webinars we build for the sector. Everything you share in the session stays confidential.
Ten years of learning from municipal teams
Listening first is how we’ve always worked. Our HR modernization work with Thunder Bay began with conversations at every level of the organization before a single step of the roadmap was drawn. Our Municipal Technology Model gives municipalities a shared way to map their technology and explain it to council. Our ERP and procurement work, from readiness assessments to project advisory, is built on what municipal teams have told us slows them down.
Where the conversation can lead
Many sessions will end with a clear next step your team can take on its own. When a challenge calls for more support, our consultants work across IT and digital strategy, ERP and core systems, cybersecurity and business continuity with encasedIT, GIS and data, website and content strategy, AI adoption and project advisory. Every engagement is vendor neutral and built around the people, time and budget your municipality has today.
Pull up a seat
If there’s a challenge you’ve been carrying on your own, bring it to us. Book a session at a time that suits you, and one of our advisors will meet you, listen, and help you think it through.