“Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress.
monGPS.ca
A business’ success depends on its ability to swiftly and efficiently access a support network when confronted by any of the many challenges it is bound to face, such as planning, hiring, regulations and by-laws, purchasing, training, financing and exporting. Those challenges change as the business evolves. The time it takes for a business to address them costs money and burns up precious time. The myGPS platform gives it instant access to the right resource at the right time.
The mandate of myGPS is to offer a support network that Outaouais entrepreneurs can access in order to find the right resource for their business project.
Background
Quebec’s support ecosystem has expanded over the past few years, offering numerous resources geared to business’ different developmental phases as well as to their activity sector. There are some 30 national organizations and more than 1000 offices, cells and organizations operating in the field (2011). In the Outaouais alone there are more than 70 offices/organizations/departments. Most businesses, and even stakeholders, are not aware of the full range of options. Service overlap and mandate duplication are detrimental to the democratization of entrepreneurship.
During the November 29, 2014 Forum socioéconomique de l’Outaouais, the local economic and political stakeholders realized the need to create a regional consultative body to represent the Outaouais and its organizations. Subsequently, in 2017, myGPS.ca was developed with financial assistance from the Ministère de l’Économie et de l’Innovation, ID Gatineau and the Table d’action en entrepreneuriat de l’Outaouais. The mandate of that body is not to cut into resources but rather to make everyone more efficient in order to boost the survival rate and accelerate the growth of businesses. MyGPS helps enhance solidarity, teamwork and outreach among organizations, all for the benefit of the community and the region.
Team
MyGPS.ca is a very big team of more than 70 organizations working in collaboration towards the shared goal of helping entrepreneurs create and grow businesses in the Outaouais. The following are members of the myGPS internal team, who are constantly working towards developing and strengthening this collaborative body.
Geneviève Ouimet
Coordinator
Audrey-Ann Vachon
Intake and communications
Steering Committee
MyGPS.ca is very proud of being able to rely on its steering committee for its major strategic and organizational orientations. This enables us to operate as a collaborative entity and to help more entrepreneurs in the Outaouais. The members of that committee come from different entrepreneurial and economic sectors in the greater Outaouais region.
Julien-Charles Paradis
President, myGPS.ca,
and Associate Director, Clinique 819
Félix Laveault-Allard
President/Founder, Edgar Web Studio
Jean-François Leblanc
Municipal Councillor, Ville de Gatineau, and member, Commission au développement économique de Gatineau
Jean Lepage
Executive Director, ID Gatineau
Jeffrey MacHan
Directeur général de l’Outaouais – Ministère de l’Économie et de l’Innovation
Josée Cousineau
Director of Operations, Carrefour jeunesse emploi de l’Outaouais
Michel Sarrazin
President, Table action en entrepreneuriat de l’Outaouais
Paul Lévesque
Executive Director, Coopérative des paramédics de l’Outaouais
Pierre Samson
President, Chambre de Commerce de Gatineau
Vincent Roy
Development Consultant, Coopérative de développement régional Outaouais-Laurentides