Peter Coy was born on the Isle of White, Hampshire England, in a small bungalow attached to the White Cliffs Bay Hotel where his father was the manager. Peter and his siblings had the run of the property in their early years and when Peter was old enough, he became an Air Cadet and received his glider pilot's license when he was 15. He also attended several RAF camps with front-line fighter jet squadrons in Germany during the cold war and flew aerobatics in 2-seater fighter jets. Unfortunately, Peter's eyesight prevented him from entering the RAF full-time when he turned 16. At that point he joined the British Civil Service, first as a clerical officer and then as a member of the computer department in operations. The pay proved to be inadequate and Peter pursued or more accurately was recruited by a major insurance company which required or encouraged him to take courses in statistics, communications, economics and other useful business skills. Peter wanted to see more than Britain and answered a small classified ad in the newspaper looking for computer programmers to emigrate to Canada and eight months later he was a landed immigrant. After 20 years working for insurance companies, at age 30, Peter started his own business and got married.
Software Concepts was formed along with the development of a fundamental CRM system, employing a staff of 20 people. Peter was responsible for custom requirements planning, systems design, sales, customer relations, marketing and HR. His partner worked on research and development and customer requirements development and led the customer support team. As in many partnerships, agreement on the next growth steps could not be reached so the company was sold. Peter formed a new software company, Prodigm Inc. and once more became the designer and developer, handling customer relations. Since 2011, Prodigm has been a Zoho Partner, a very major cloud-based CRM system, providing a complete business management system. Zoho is growing exponentially and now has over 80 million users worldwide and employ 10,000 people. Over 150 Zoho-based projects have been implemented since 2011, supporting systems for customer relations, accounting, inventory, online sales, mass email, project and document management, word processing, automated forms, workflow automation, quality control and the list goes on. Peter is a systems architect and passionate about great system design, helping smaller companies become more profitable, productive and innovative while eliminating delays and lost profitability. Peter also enjoys mentoring and developing many young IT professionals.
Peter has been President of Toronto Operetta Theatre, Toastmaster, a tenor in Grace Church choir in Toronto, soccer coach, been involved supporting political campaigns and is involved locally with the tennis club and Chamber of Commerce, Rugby Club and of course, the Rotary Club of Belleville. He is passionate about play writing and directing, narrating documentaries, cycling, reducing CO2 emissions and improving road safety, etc. Peter loves music and got into acting and described this community as a rich place for artistic explosion, much more than Toronto. Peter started his talk saying that it might be dull. Obviously not! He and his wife Brooke love it here. Peter was thanked by Karen Baker, described as a man of many talents.