Federation of Canadian Municipalities

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities is a body tasked with representing the interests of municipalities across the country to the Government of Canada. FCM is highly influential in engaging policymakers and federal agencies and guiding policy to the benefit of the municipalities they represent. In 2017, it was decided that the advocacy group needed a stronger digital presence to more effectively accomplish its mission. FCM’s existing online presence was an outdated, proprietary platform that consisted of multiple digital systems. These separate systems failed to integrate well with one another, causing significant issues for FCM staff. It was far too easy to lose track of content, resulting in duplications, broken pages, and an inability to effectively manage users. FCM’s existing CMS acted as a crude repository for all details and information, producing organizational issues that proved detrimental to their overall mission of representing municipalities across a nation.

As an advocacy group, FCM sought to improve the look and feel of their online presence. They wanted to move away from the sterile, “corporate” look that had been the standard of their website for years in favour of a fresher, more inviting design.

User experience design was of utmost importance to FCM. Facing difficulties with both internal engagement (in the form of workflow and content management) and external engagement (in the form of locating and accessing the right information), FCM needed to restructure its site with a more human focus.

After a competitive bidding process, OPIN was awarded the contract to bring FCM’s digital ambitions to life. The OPIN team, experts in content consolidation and user experience, were a clear choice for the advocacy group.

OPIN’s unique commitment to Drupal, the powerful technology behind all of their enterprise digital projects, was a selling point for FCM, who was impressed by the content management system’s robust functionality and content publishing capabilities. Further, as an open source software, the powerful tool offered greater value at a lower price point than their existing proprietary technology. 

After comprehensive discovery sessions led by OPIN, the team got to work getting the new site’s look and feel right from the get-go - a top priority for FCM. OPIN’s award-winning designers produced a user interface that was not only clean and accessible but beautiful to look at and suited FCM’s brand perfectly.

The final product was a clean, modern site with an improved workflow and information architecture.  OPIN’s world-class team of designers, web developers and product owners helped FCM manage large groups of stakeholders through their digital presence, contributing to their advocacy on behalf of the nation’s countless municipalities.