Business in Vancouver

Date: September 23, 2015

Name: Business Excellence Series – Leveraging Technology

Presenters: Elizabeth Vannan, Greg Malpass, Lindsay Smith, and Craig Brennan

Most businesses are now relying on new technology solutions to strengthen their products development, marketing and customer engagements. Moreover, leaders need to know how to adapt technology to increase business productivity and efficiently. Business in Vancouver presents the Business Excellence Series for business leaders to understand how to leverage technology in their operation. This presentation invites Elizabeth Vannan, the Senior manager and BC technology consulting lead for MNP LLP, Greg Malpass, the Founder and CEO of Traction on Demand, Lindsay Smith, the CEO of Massive Media, and Craig Brennan, the CEO of QuickMobile to discuss their perspectives on the current technology trend. Along with the moderator, Eamonn Percy, the Founder of The Percy Group, they will share their experience and guidance to help leaders to build the right technical innovations of their businesses.

The statistic shows in the last 24 hours, there are over 9 billion videos view on YouTube. There are over 200 billion emails send over the internet and over 5 million smartphones are sold across the world. Furthermore, there are more smartphones sold than baby born.

Craig Brennan believes the biggest technology trends for Vancouver businesses is the concept of changing analog to digital. Technology is putting sensors on everything for businesses to create insights and actions. Businesses will collect the insights to increase business performance.

“Data is the diamond for business”

Lindsay Smith mentions technology will analyze client’s information. Many companies are still flying blind and they are not leverage the data to make smart decisions. Greg Malpass emphasizes technology can lead companies to access faster or fail faster. Technology only creates opportunities and leaders need to seek what is available. Elizabeth Vannan believes the technology will create competitive advantage on utilities, so leaders need to think about the next strategy.

Malpass wants leaders to fix the beginning process. Leaders should find ways to improve the root of the business. Vannan wants leaders to spend where the money is. Leaders should find system that helps their businesses to reduce risks. Smith mentions the world will be either digital or traditional. it is important to put technology into multiple area of business that will impact the operation. Therefore, Brennan encourages leaders to start with paper dashboard. This will allow leaders to identify their business key performance factors. This will give the ability to understand the driver of the business and allow technology to automate it.

“Simple way to put finger in business”

Malpass shares that Telus implement technology system to their traditional door to door sals team to explore and understand their target audience. This allows Telus to create unique experiences for customers. Smith shares that some hotels are afraid of technology advancement. By providing the right knowledge, hotels are able to understand technology can help them fine tune their customer attention. Vernon shares that many non profit organizations are not able to use technology to connect and interact with donors because of old system. Instead of maintaining their current system that is not working on operation, organizations should put strategy to take advantage of cloud system to reduce their down time and create opportunities to save money. Idea of technology can help business grow.

There are some bad experience as well. Brennan mentions there is a company that implement a system without the right fundamental, which results of complex operation procedures. There are too many leaders look too far. They should look at the fundamental first. Leaders need to simplify the basic operations first.

Many leaders have the misconception of believing technology can save the day. Smith emphasizes technology can only support the operation and it takes team effort to make up the rest of the factors. Leaders need to research on competitors.

Malpass states 3 factors that might lead companies to low productivity.

1. A lack of executives support
2. Use the historical data collect from original IT system
3. Change management

Many people are still lacking technology skills, and leaders need to seek them and train them. Smith suggests leaders to focus on data management. This will help them focus on the actions. Many jobs will be automated by technology and new startups should look into the next 5 years on how they can complete on technology change.

Brennan suggests leaders to read “The circle” and “The second machine age” books to understand more on the impact of technology on businesses. He also suggests leaders need to identify at least 10 elements that data can analyze to help business future. Smith suggests leaders to invest technology in the role of business. Malpass suggests leaders to create technology group in the companies to brainstorm new ideas for business. Vannan suggests leaders to create their IT plan.

Leaders need to find ways to recognize and appreciate people. Malpass recommends leaders to curve time for employees, give them bandwidth and show them the right IT definition. When leaders find the right people, they will form a team and they will recruit others.

For small businesses, Brennan shares a formula to help them change.

D x V x  F > R

This formula means when the factors of dissatisfaction with how things are now, vision of what is possible, and first concrete steps towards vision are greater than resistance, the change is possible for small businesses.

Vannan wants small business to look for the cheapest way to solve their problems. Small business should not focus on fancy; instead, they should focus on efficiently.

Many organizations are fear of letting technology take too much control. Smith recommends leaders to understand how technology can help them. Brennan wants leaders to start mastering on their analytical skills. When companies collect the data, their next phase will be going back to their fundamental questions. When leaders have the right analytical skills, they will be able to drive back to insight and create the result they want.

“Need to be more proactive thinker”

Technology can track everything. Leaders need to implement the system that can automate the ROI. With the right system, it can help business to be faster, lower cost, improve performance and have compliance.

“Try again, fail again, fail better”