When you’re the source of alcohol service training for a provincial population of more than 15 million people, there’s a lot riding on your ability to provide fast, easy-to-use certification. That’s exactly the position Smart Serve Ontario (SSO) was in when they chose Integrity Advocate as their complete solution for online ID verification, participation monitoring, reviewing and support.

Recently, we sat down with SSO’s Executive Director, Richard Anderson, to talk about the organization’s evolving training requirements, and why he thinks similar alcohol and food server training organizations should consider adopting Integrity Advocate.

Big Territory, Big Challenges

To understand the challenges facing SSO, you need to understand Ontario. The province is home to more than 40% of Canada’s population, representing dozens of languages and ethnic groups spread out over 415,000 square miles. If you live in Ontario, and you sell, serve, handle or deliver alcohol, you need Smart Serve certification.  

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With such a diverse group of participants, a major challenge for Smart Serve Ontario is making sure training is accessible and easy-to-use for everyone who needs it.

Maintaining Privacy and Ease-of-Use

Smart Serve Ontario was an early adopter of online training; when they first started working with Integrity Advocate, in 2019, the organization already had a robust online training program built out. However, their proctoring solution at the time was raising some significant red flags around privacy and accessibility:

“With our previous proctoring solution, you had to download an app, which people objected to; there was also a scheduling component that was inconvenient,” said Anderson.

"With our previous proctoring solution, you had to download an app, which people objected to; there was also a scheduling component that was inconvenient,” said Anderson.

What drew them to Integrity Advocate was the platform’s ability to offer a full-service solution — technology, reviewing and support from one vendor — that is customizable, and built for privacy and accessibility.

"“ntegrity Advocate works on all devices. We don’t hear any complaints, you don’t need to download any applications. The validation is very quick, the turnaround is very quick, the support is great, and it’s on demand. We don’t have any complaints from our users. We’ve been very happy!”

Things were going great. And in 2023, a major certification change would create a stress test that proved the scalability of Integrity Advocate’s solution.

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British Columbia has some of the most stringent privacy protection laws in the world, and the British Columbia Institute of Technology holds its technology partners to the same standard. When BCIT's legacy proctoring provider began generating rising privacy concerns and student frustration, across a student body of more than 48,000 and 2,000+ faculty, the institute needed a change that wouldn't disrupt learning in the process.

Key Outcomes

• 13,000+ exams proctored remotely in one semester
• Successful mid-year integration with D2L Brightspace
• Only 1% of students needed support
• Improved student satisfaction and privacy compliance

Challenge

BCIT needed a solution that could protect student privacy without compromising exam security, integrate easily with its existing D2L Brightspace LMS, reduce student support needs and administrative burden, and offer flexible, exam-level rule sets to accommodate diverse course requirements. With the COVID-19 pandemic requiring 100% of exams to move online, the transition had to happen quickly, without disrupting learning.

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Solution

Integrity Advocate offered BCIT a no-install, privacy-first solution that integrated seamlessly with D2L Brightspace and minimized administrative overhead. The partnership let BCIT switch proctoring providers mid-year with limited disruption, empower faculty to enable proctoring on a per-exam basis, reduce student frustration by eliminating unnecessary downloads and complexity, and improve transparency and ease of use for both students and staff.

Academic Level Validation and flexible rule sets gave faculty the control they needed, while Integrity Advocate's integration and support ensured proctoring remained effortless and trusted across every course and exam.

Results

In just five months, BCIT proctored over 13,000 remote exams with Integrity Advocate, delivering a smoother, more secure experience for students and faculty without sacrificing privacy or ease of use.

Faculty members easily enabled proctoring where needed, reducing administrative burdens and keeping student support requests under 1%, a dramatic improvement that reinforced BCIT's commitment to student satisfaction. By partnering with Integrity Advocate, BCIT met its privacy and accessibility goals and set a higher standard for modern, student-centered proctoring.

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The National Payroll Institute issues two professional designations, the Payroll Compliance Professional and the Payroll Leadership Professional, held today by more than 21,000 members. Integrity is one of NPI's four core values, so when the COVID-19 pandemic forced a rapid shift away from honor-based, supervisor-led proctoring, NPI needed an online solution that could uphold that standard at scale.

Key Outcomes

• 57% reduction in academic integrity incidents, from an average of 86 per month down to 37
• Fewer than 1% of users require technical support
• More than 30,000 exams proctored with a seamless experience

Challenge

NPI's first attempt at online proctoring didn't hold up. The system required plugin downloads, ran on a limited set of browsers, and offered no French-language support for the 12% of NPI's membership that operates in French. Close to half of students hit a technical issue during their exam. For a body responsible for validating the competency of more than 17,000 PCP and 4,000 PLP designation holders, that wasn't a minor inconvenience. It was a threat to the credibility of the credential itself.

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A Complete Transformation in User Experience

After switching to Integrity Advocate, the technical support burden that used to consume staff time became close to invisible. Integration with NPI's D2L Brightspace LMS meant students could move directly from coursework into a proctored exam without separate logins or downloads, and the entire implementation took a single 45-minute setup meeting, compared to weeks of troubleshooting under the previous system.

"We're getting very little feedback," Pacella said. "And that's amazing. That speaks volumes. That's exactly what we want. You don't hear about software that works well typically... But if it didn't work, you better believe we're going to hear about it a lot."

Dramatic Improvement in Academic Integrity

Paired with a proactive integrity education module, NPI's average dropped from 86 incidents per month to 37, a reduction of more than half, and the improvement held steady over time.

"We went from an average of 86 incidents per month, and it dropped more than in half, down to 37," Pacella said. "And that's been very consistent since we implemented some of these resources and things for people to understand what academic integrity means."

The reduction wasn't just about fewer incidents. It was about quality. The incidents that remained were genuine violations, not technical false positives or misunderstandings about proctoring protocols. That let NPI's review committees spend their time on legitimate concerns instead of sorting through noise, producing more consistent, more defensible decisions.

Seamless Student Experience

Daniela Kwiatkowski, NPI's Manager of Learning and Professional Development, experienced the system firsthand when she took one of NPI's own courses. Her experience highlighted how the technology disappeared into the background, letting students focus on demonstrating their professional competency.

"Before you do it for the first time, you're thinking, how am I going to do this?" Kwiatkowski said. "I moved the camera to one corner and then I forgot about it, and it was easy to forget about it. It wasn't constantly there... now I could focus on the exam, which is what we want people to do."

Scaling Success Across the Organization

NPI's growth didn't stop once the technical problems were solved. According to Steven Van Alstine, Vice President of Professional Standards and Education, NPI moved from proctoring a few thousand students to e-proctoring every student pursuing the Payroll Compliance Professional designation, a ramp-up that happened in under three months.

"We were able to scale that up dramatically through our move to D2L Brightspace and the integration with Integrity Advocate," Van Alstine said. "There was a point at which we maybe had a few thousand students being e-proctored, to the point now where every one of our students is e-proctored... and that ramp-up happened in less than three months."

That rapid scaling extended across NPI's mixed delivery model, including partnerships with public and private academic institutions alongside direct-to-student programs, without requiring different standards across channels.

Administrative Efficiency and Confidence

Decision-making that previously took weeks now happens within 48 hours, with clear evidence and streamlined processes. The administrative team developed communication templates and tracking systems to ensure consistent, fair handling of every incident.

"Giving someone a zero on an exam or failing a course is a big deal," Kwiatkowski said. "I cannot emphasize it enough... Having the peace of mind to know this is an incident that was flagged for the right reasons... we are very confident that this is legitimate."

Advice for Other Organizations

NPI's guidance to other certifying bodies is straightforward: technical due diligence up front saves significant time later.

"There are a lot of products out there," Pacella said. "And you're going to reach out to them, and the sales team will talk a big game about all the wonderful things they can do. Take your time and understand the technical aspects of implementation before making a decision."

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