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Once upon a time...
In 1986, Jonar was founded by Stephen Ruby, who worked hard to provide reliable ERP software to his customers. For 3 decades, Jonar sold, implemented and serviced high quality software, one customer at a time.  

Then something happened. We decided to try to be better.

In 2011, Stephen’s son, Jon Ruby joined the business. Jon had worked at Jonar as a teenager, gaining an understanding of the ERP industry. Over 20 years, he went on to build and grow a number of small businesses before coming back to Montreal to help his father figure out the future of Jonar.

Jon quickly determined that there wasn’t much of a future for locally hosted, Windows-based, niche constrained, traditional ERP systems. So together, Jon and Stephen decided to entertain an odd but interesting notion: could ERP be completely re-imagined to take advantage of the latest ideas and technologies to provide a solution with the features and functionality of traditional systems but easier, faster and cheaper?

It was an ambitious idea but they agreed to try. Jon spent most of a year designing a brand new approach to ERP. But turning this new approach into reality proved challenging - the best engineers told them that what they wanted to build could not be built.

That's when necessity gave birth to invention. Jonar had to devise a new type of team to build this new type of software. 

More than ten years later, ParagonERP is that revolutionary system and the team that built it is as much, if not more of, a revelation.

Stephen ruby

Stephen Ruby

Founder
Jon Ruby

Jon Ruby

CEO

Some highlights of our journey

1986

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Jonar Systems Inc. was founded in Montreal, Quebec.

1987

AIMS 1987

We started selling our first ERP software, AIMS (Apparel Information Management Software) in DOS.

1990

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We launched our JSI accounting software (the DOS version).

1990

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We began treating our staff to weekly breakfast of champions - warm, fresh Montreal bagels.

1992

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We launched our own EDI module that we built in-house.

1995

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We moved our office space to a bigger location to acommodate our growing team.

1998

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We hosted our first annual team picnic party (of many more to come).

2000

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We tried our hand at point of sales with the launch of our POS system, JSI Storz. The product launch admittedly fails.

2001

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We released JAS for Windows and further established ourselves as authorities on manufacturing and import/export.

2007

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Jonar ranked third in the category of Best ERP in Apparel Magazine's Top 50 Software Scorecard.

2011

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Succession of management when Jon Ruby took over the daily operations of Jonar from the founder, Stephen Ruby.

2012

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We finally reached our wits end with ERP systems that suck. We began re-designing a completely new ERP solution.

2013

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We finished the design for our new software and begin early stage user validation.

2013

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We awarded our first Jonar Team Values Ambassador - a team member who best embodies our company values.

2013

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We officially began building our new software, ParagonERP.

2014

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The realization that people are people and should be treated that way initiated major changes in our HR policies.

2015

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We moved from using the Agile methodology to Scrum.

2015

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First beta customers start using ParagonERP.

2016

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ParagonERP officially launches.

2017

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We moved our office to a bright, new open concept space more accessible by public transportation and that had better food delivery options.

2017

Abdulla

For the first time, a customer purchases ParagonERP directly from our website and their Paragon installation is successfully deployed and set up in under 5 minutes.

2017

Moni

We decide to separate our corporate brand from our product brand . Project Firebrand is underway.

2018

Beta

We released the first version of our API. Shopify is launched as our first ecommerce integration.

2020

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ParagonSMB launches!

2020

WFH-Covid

Covid19 happens. For the safety of our team, everyone is sent to work from home.

2020

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Obi joins the crew as our official Office pup!

2020

WFH

We renovated our office to fit our growing team.

2021

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We 're Certified a Great Place to Work in Canada! We even got nominated as one of best 50 places to work in Quebec and as a top place to work in the Technology sector.

Learn a bit more...