Busting through the cloud
This column was originally published in Progress Magazine, Vol. 18, No. 4
We’ve all got a friend like David Alston. He’s that guy, the one with the really cool job (vice-president of marketing at Radian 6), who travels to cool locations (South by Southwest in Austin, Tx.) and hangs out with cool people (the Old Spice Guy, Isaiah Mustafa). And he’s so nice he always invites his friends to join him. I’ve tagged along dozens of times, listening to conversations, checking out interesting presentations and along the way I’ve made a few new connections – all courtesy of David. Sure we haven’t seen each other in over a year but who cares? I always know where to find him – I just look in the cloud.
“When you work in the cloud, you choose where you want to work, where you want to live, because it really doesn’t matter,” says Alston. “You just plug into the cloud.” The cloud is short for cloud computing, the process of providing computing services via a computer network rather than from your own hard drive. We’re all in the cloud these days because that’s where our online tools reside. Google is there, so is Skype, Twitter, Hotmail and Facebook. Our smartphones and tablets grab us information off the cloud and odds are if your company uses a local area network, it’s probably in the cloud.
Alston’s company Radian6 made its reputation deciphering all that information streaming through the cloud. Created by Chris Newton and Chris Ramsey in 2006, Radian6 monitors all the chatter and on social media sites, including Twitter, Facebook, blogs, news sites, discussion boards and video and image sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr. For Radian6 clients such as Dell, Microsoft, Geico, Canadian Tire and Cirque du Soleil, knowing what customers are saying about them and their competitors helps them tailor their sales and marketing plans and improve customer service.
In March 2011, Salesforce.com acquired Radian6 for $316 million. San Francisco-based Salesforce.com is the industry leader in cloud computing, providing customer relationship management (CRM) applications such as sales tracking, customer service, internal communications and marketing management. When the announcement was made, Radian6 executives were quick to assure their local Maritimes audience that they weren’t moving. The company’s roots are in Fredericton, with offices in Saint John and Halifax but really, its physical location in the Maritimes isn’t important; in Radian6’s world, the only addresses that matter are the ones on the web.
There are two lessons to be learned from Radian6’s success, for Atlantic Canadian businesses both big and small. The first is the obvious one, about cultivating markets in the borderless online world. In this role, Radian6 is the 21st century successor to the more traditional resource-based companies that successfully exported their products around the world.
How Radian6 found and expanded that audience is the other lesson. Alston and his colleagues like to say that listening is the key to success online but that’s only half the story. The really successful companies, like Radian6 and its roster of Fortune 100 clients, don’t just listen; they engage. That can be an unnerving proposition for company executives who have nurtured and protected their brands through carefully controlled messages. However, traditional corporate communications does not easily migrate to the social web.
When we’re online we want to connect with people who project a personality we like and admire. The Radian6 team identified this shift, developed algorithms to quantify it and then led by example, encouraging its employees from CEO Marcel LeBrun on down to let their personalities come through in their tweets, instant messages and blog posts. When you take your brand online, building relationships should be the goal; making sales is the byproduct. That is the definition of a distributed brand, which co-creates its brand identity with its customers. “Customers humanize a brand, they don’t damage it,” says Alston.
Those customers are located all over the place, which means companies need to let go of regional identifications. As Alston says, Radian6 is here in the Maritimes because it is where the founders live and where they have found talented people. “The discussion shouldn’t be about here or there,” says Alston. “It’s about being anywhere.” And as Radian6 shows us, choosing the path to anywhere begins by taking a big leap into the cloud.
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Life is a highway
This column was originally published in Progress magazine, Vol. 18, No. 5 (September 2001)
Truro is a drive-through town, recognizable for what sits on its edge – fast food joints, gas stations and highway signs directing travelers to the four corners of the region: Halifax, Cape Breton, PEI and New Brunswick. Which is why, just as the post-war boom was getting started, a guy named Pat Smith decided he could make a decent living here shipping electrical supplies around the region.
The company, known as The Eldis Group (short for electronic distribution) proved successful but then, in the late 1990s, the world started shopping online – and The Eldis Group realized it needed to follow its customers. By 1999 it had morphed into PartSelect.com, and today it is a North American leader in online sales of appliance and electronics parts. How Eldis became PartSelect is the story of two highways – one asphalt, the other broadband – and how understanding traffic can lead you to customers.
PartsSelect sells the little stuff we need when something big breaks. In the old days, a company like PartSelect would have bought ads in the local paper or used direct mail to reach customers but that strategy doesn’t work online. As Ben Graham, director of ecommerce for Eldis Group says; “We don’t have the opportunity to build a relationship with customers; we react to a need from people.”
PartSelect is a successful Maritime company few people have heard of but just about everyone can find if you know where to look. Type ‘dishwasher parts’ into Google and up pops Partselect.ca, first on the list of sponsored links and prominently listed a few times on the first page of Google views. That’s the kind of profile that makes Graham smile. He is an expert in search engine optimization (SEO), the process of improving the visibility of a website in search engine results, and search engine marketing (SEM), which raises a website’s profile through paid placement on search engines. “If someone can search what you sell, then it is imperative you do a good job of search marketing,” he says.
That means understanding Google, which hosts about 65 per cent of North American search engine traffic (83 per cent globally). There are three basic factors that go into how Google ranks web pages; the frequency keywords are used on the site, the age of the website, and the number of other web pages that link to the site. That third factor is critical because Google places great importance on the quantity and quality of links between sites.
“If you want to generate organic traffic it is really important that they (Google) like you,” says Graham. For PartSelect, it must strive to have other high traffic sites that relate to home repair and appliances link to it and it to them. To do that, they need really great content. That’s why when you visit PartSelect you’ll find instructions on how to install a part, troubleshooting tips (if you’re dishwasher isn’t washing the dishes, check the water inlet valve) and links to other sites for the do-it-yourselfer.
Making how-to videos wasn’t on anyone’s mind when The Eldis Group first decided to leave behind the repair shop and get into online shopping. It had built a successful business-to-business distributor of Maytag parts for decades but in the late 1990s Maytag announced it would allow distributors to compete in each other’s home turf. Maytag was apologetic to its Truro distributor, assuming it meant larger American distributors would drive them out of business. Instead, The Eldis Group took its decades-long knowledge of distribution networks and headed south.
By 2000 it was successfully serving the eastern United States, but its call centre was taking an increasingly high number of calls from consumers who had found the Eldis Group’s website and wanted to buy directly from the company. That prompted the next big change from a business-to-business distributor into a business-to-consumer sales force.
Graham believes the company’s Truro location helped them make the leap. “We are geographically remote, we are sparsely populated and few people wants to deal with this part of the country,” he says. “Being Maritimers means we understand that business environment.” To Eldis no market is too small, no customer too remote for it to serve – as long as there’s a highway, be it broadband or asphalt, for it to travel.
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In the neighbourhood
This column was originally published in Progress Magazine, Vol. 18, No. 6
When you’re a small business, it helps to know your place. If you want to be a successful small business, you better have a prominent address in the Google neighbourhood. “The attraction to Google is pretty simple,” says Daniel Wheaton, one half of the pair behind FlipSide Marketing, a Saint John-based small business that advises other small businesses on digital marketing. “If you want people to find you, you better make sure Google can find you first.”
Wheaton and his partner, Jacques Desjardins are both advocates and users of Google’s slate of products, most of which are free – the perfect price point for small business.
For instance, Google Places is a free business listing service, which allows business owners to register their address, contact information, video images of what they’re selling and other pertinent information. Google then incorporates and highlights the information in its searches. For instance, if you search ‘shoe stores Charlottetown’, Google will produce a map of Charlottetown with 10 lettered ‘tacks’ indicating the locations of various shoe stores such as Proude’s Shoes on Saint Peters Road and Wright’s and Redshoes on Queen Street. These are companies that are registered with Google – and earning front page placement without spending a dime.
However Wheaton cautions there is no set playbook for selling and marketing products online. “It’s different for everyone,” he says. “We always start by asking the client what it is they want to accomplish.” If it is a straight-up hard sell, small business owners might be disappointed at the reception they get – or don’t. It is, as most social media evangelists like to say, about building relationships. At Flipside Marketing, they advise clients to apply the 80/20 rule to social media – spend 20 per cent promoting the business and the remaining 80 per cent developing a rapport with friends, followers and fans by offering advice and commentary that establishes you as an expert in your field. “It is something a lot of business people struggle with,” says Wheaton. “They get on and start hard selling themselves and then wonder why they’ve only got 12 followers on Twitter.”
Sarah Jones has been there. A couple of years ago the Saint John-based visual artist became the coordinator of the Emerging Entrepreneurs program at Enterprise Saint John, the region’s economic development agency, just as she was opening her own business, a storefront gallery in the city’s Uptown. She uses social media exclusively to promote both projects – to great success. “Facebook is a gift from the marketing gods,” she says. “You would pay so much money for that kind of exposure in regular media.” For instance, a recent free seminar (on Google marketing) filled up within 24 hours after being posted to the Emerging Entrepreneurs Facebook group page (362 members.
But this do-it-yourself marketing does come with a cost – your time – because well, you have to do it yourself. Jones pauses when asked to describe the advice she gives to newcomers to the digital frontier. “Some are extremely hesitant to set it up. If you don’t already work in that space, social media and the web feel so huge, like an enormous task.” She advises clients to set a regular schedule for social media participation – and reach out to other entrepreneurs who have already taken the plunge for helpful tips.
Here in Saint John there are a lot of great examples of small business owners engaging with the public. For instance Kiera Fraser of Je Suis Prest Boutique uses Twitter, Facebook and texting to reach customers with news and videos about the emerging designers featured in her shop – sometimes inviting regular customers to model their new look. Pete Stoddart, owner of the Saint John Ale House is the would-be star of a two-minute weekly video segment on the SJAH TV YouTube channel. There he talks about cool things happening in the region, visits local farmers with executive chef Jessie Vergen and, if you’re an Ale House fan on Facebook, he’ll even wish you happy birthday. Because when you’re strolling through the world wide web, it’s always nice to return to that place where everyone knows your name.
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Archangel
This column was originally published as the cover story in Progress Magazine, Vol. 18, no. 7 (December 2011)
To get Gerry Pond’s attention these days it helps to have some horsepower driving your dreams. For the past five years Pond has played Gabriel to the Atlantic region’s angel investors, heralding the arrival of new entrepreneurs with big ideas. Up until now almost all of them have been in the tech sector but this past year Pond began looking farther afield for entrepreneurs with ideas that just might change our world.
People such as University of New Brunswick PhD student Christy Clarke who has captured Pond’s imagination with her start-up company Gratitude Works. From a rural property in Sussex, N.B., Clarke operates an education and therapy program that employs horses as both teachers and healers. The process, known as Facilitated Equine Experiential Learning (FEEL) allows clients to learn, through their interaction with the horses, how to develop life skills such as anger management, leadership, cooperative teamwork and non-verbal communication. “Christy’s a natural entrepreneur,” says Pond. “It didn’t take me too long to know that I wanted to be on her team.”
Clark is a social entrepreneur, a new breed that apply business principles to address and solve social problems. To date social entrepreneurs have operated almost exclusively in the not-for-profit and voluntary sectors. However there is a small but growing cadre of senior business leaders across North America who believe social entrepreneurs are destined to be game-changers over the next decade, much like innovators such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin and Larry Page were in the early digital days. Over the next five years Pond intends to start five social entrepreneurship entities. Gratitude Works is one of those five.
On the surface there doesn’t seem to be much of a connection between Christy Clarke’s horse therapy and the web analytics of Pond’s most famous former protégé, Chris Newton, creator of the technology behind Q1 Labs and Radian6. But of course there is: they each seek a solution to a problem, and right now, Pond believes our social problems need our immediate attention. It is why he teamed up with Boston-based billionaire, angel investor and philanthropist Gurunraj ‘Desh’ Deshpande to create the Pond-Deshpande Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UNB.
Deshpande, who like Pond is a UNB alumni, is passionate about matching innovative ideas with existing problems to develop common-sense solutions that have impact. To do that, Deshpande believes in supporting ideas developed within the community, which is, of course, what Pond has been doing for well over a decade. Together Pond and Deshpande have provided $5 million to establish the centre, which will support local researchers and entrepreneurs transform ideas into products and services with impact. Both men are very clear; the centre will support both traditional business entrepreneurs and the new wave of social entrepreneurs.
Pond’s entry into the world of social entrepreneurship began while co-chairing the New Brunswick government’s consultation process on poverty reduction in 2009. That volunteer role led him to Seth Asimakos, the founder of the Saint John Community Loan Fund, which provides micro-credit to low-income applicants who want to start a business. Since its creation in 1996 it has disbursed over $200,000 in loans and generated over $3 million in new income. Its average loan is $1,250. Asimakos’ story fascinates Pond, so much so that while the rest of region continues to talk about Radian6, Pond is just as happy telling people about Community Loan Fund client Paul Reeves, ‘the bike guy’. Reeves developed a lightweight bicycle saddlebag made of corrugated plastic, called Trunx 4 Bikes. Pond was on the team that provided Reeves with business advice. “We need to understand the ties between strong communities and strong businesses,” says Pond of his new direction. “I’m still a student of all this, but I know this is the right thing to do.”
Gerry Pond’s next generation of entrepreneurs
They’re not famous – yet – but these entrepreneurs are developing new products and services in the ICT and social enterprise sectors.
Chris Boudreau, ClinicServer – Web-based clinic management software platform for medical service professional such as physiotherapists, chiropractors, registered massage therapists, reflexologists, naturpathies, pedorthics, speech language pathologists and traditional Chinese medicine.
Christy Clarke, Gratitude Works – Atlantic Canada’s first equine-guided experiential learning practice.
Mark Hemphill, Screenscape – An online digital display service that uses location-specific signage, media distribution and advertising to engage audiences.
Richard Jones, Shift Energy – Web analytics and real time monitoring of a building’s energy consumption to help reduce energy use by up to 15 per cent and lower peak demand.
Todd Murphy, MedRunner – Web-based medical prescription platform that allows physicians and pharmacies to send and receive electronic prescriptions and communicate in real time.
Darren Piercey, CyberPsyc Software Solutions – Developer of virtual reality software to treat phobias and anxiety disorders.
Anita Punamiya, Comprecultures – Intercultural consulting and training services for companies building a multicultural workforce or looking to do business into other countries and cultures.
Yan Simard, ZapTap – Developer of a smart phone technology to scan product codes to get product information, including reviews, special offers and post-purchase support.
Kumaran Thillainadarjah, Smart Skin Technologies – Developer of Smart Skin, a unique pressure sensitive protective material for touch screen smartphones and tablets.
Scott Walton, Enovex – Developer of a carbon capture system and solutions consultancy to help industries reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
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Lost in translation
This column was originally published in Progress Magazine, Vol. 18, No. 8 (January 2012)
To succeed in modern, global markets, it helps to be a little old-fashioned. Be polite, be patient and try to always say it with a smile – these are the skills we learned in the playground that serve us well in the work place. But how do you do that from behind a glowing screen, where most of us spend our time and where no one can see our face?
This is a question Ian Cavanagh, CEO of information technology and business consultancy firm Ambir Technologies asks himself on a regular basis. He and his team have built a successful company with offices in multiple locations, a model fast becoming the norm for high tech firms in the Maritimes.
The region, with its half dozen small cities knitted together by twinned highways and early morning Jazz flights, is an example of the digital dream foretold over two decades ago. While the rest of us were still trying to figure out our modems, that generation of IT thinkers was talking about a new way of doing business that would free us from the geographically locked-in industrial model. Cavanagh and his contemporaries in the ICT sector have converted that into a business reality, creating networked offices located where the skilled employees live – and in the Maritimes, they’re not all in one place.
To stay connected, Ambir has a set of digital tools that is akin to the old supply cabinet but instead of sticky notes, message pads and thumb tacks, they’ve got voice mail, email, instant message, Skype (for voice and video) and Chatter, a Salesforce.com product that acts like the old bulletin board, only this one scrolls by on everyone’s desktop. “I think communications is one of the most important things for companies to consider but most companies struggle with it, ours included,” says Cavanagh.
“With that much complexity there is a risk of being inundated.” This communications quandary increases when clients and suppliers enter the mix, particularly if they’re not from around here. Cultural differences have always been a consideration for those who do business around the world, however digital communications, with its speed and impersonal nature, can impede the client relationship, the very thing that lies at the heart of good business. “We can no longer ignore how culture impacts communications,” says Cavanagh. “It is an issue of context.”
Digital communications can do a lot of things, but nuance isn’t on that list. Who hasn’t received an email that appeared more brusque than friendly, or the quick reply that was long on snark? This is one of the unanticipated consequences of our digital revolution; in a very short period of time, the written word has overtaken the spoken word as our primary means of communication. Inevitably, something gets lost in the interpretation. Maybe the tone of a message is misread as being harsher than it was meant to be, or the writer uses ambiguous language so the meaning is lost. As the team at Ambir has learned sometimes the fastest route isn’t the best route to take. “We don’t think enough about the level of complexity,” says Cavanagh. “A classic example is email. The easiest thing is to respond to an email with an email but maybe what is needed is a phone call. There is much less to be lost in verbal communications than in text-based.”
It was while working on a project in India that Cavanagh first began to seriously consider the impact of digital technologies on business relationships. “We had the flawed expectation that everyone would understand our way, that they worked like us.” Even something as simple as the meaning of the word ‘yes’ can be open to interpretation across cultures. In North American business circles, it is as an emphatic guarantee that something will be done – ‘I will’: in other parts of the world, the meaning is closer to ‘I’ll try’. That’s a nuance that can’t be conveyed through instant message. Even video conferencing can’t fully replace the face-to-face meeting, with its non-verbal cues and body language.
What it can do is create a business opportunity. Over the past few years, Ambir has honed its communications skills, learning how to make employees in multiple locations feel like their part of a united team. They’ve become experts in the art of nuance, learning how to match the right communications tool with the information being delivered. Cavanagh believes those skills can be transferred to international business and the practice of working with clients in multiple locations around the world. Within the Maritimes’ dispersed population lies a chance to lead. “I see it as a strength,” says Cavanagh. “We are forced to figure communications out and that is a skill with great value.”
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Plugged in
Beneath Saint John’s streets is a highway of glass.
Fibre optic cables, laid by NBTel in the 1990s, provides a level of high speed access unmatched in any other city in Canada to this day. NBTel’s strategy was simple: the traditional phone business was changing and the days of selling hardware were over. The next generation would belong to companies that could provide solutions. Initially, that drive to lay cable was born from the need to provide ICT solutions for customer contact firms such as Xerox, Air Canada and IBM. However by the mid-1990s three other factors were driving growth in broadband research and development in Saint John.
The first was economic. The region’s major employers needed to increase productivity and provide improved services to customers – through ICT solutions. The second factor was public policy. All three levels of government (federal, provincial and municipal) were early supporters of NBTel’s drive to innovate, first as advocates, then as clients and, in the case of the federal government, an early – and important – investor in start-up technology.
The third factor in broadband innovation was competition. The local market was simply too small to drive business growth, so NBTel’s sales force looked outside New Brunswick to market its broadband technology, specifically to other telecommunications companies in Canada and the United States. Locally, Fundy Communications, owned by Saint John entrepreneur Bill Stanley, was the first cable company in Canada to push into phone services. By 1999 Saint John was the battleground between two former monopoly utilities determined to evolve into nimble ICT innovators. To achieve this, Fundy Communications invested in a province-wide hybrid fibre cable system, making New Brunswick the only jurisdiction in North America to have two fibre optic systems. By 2000 Saint John was the most technologically advanced broadband community in North America.
If the 1990s was about laying down the fibre, the first decade of the 21st century has been about harnessing the content. Bell Aliant’s new generation of broadband services, FibreOp, is Canada’s first 100 per cent fibre-optic network and its fastest. It led the City of Saint John and Bell Aliant to work together to develop solutions for municipal services that are born in Saint John and and which can be marketed globally. Saint John is home to the world’s first hosted telephony system that integrates digital phone services with Microsoft’s OCS (Office Communications Server). This system allows municipal workers to phone, text, instant message, email and share data across phones and computers at all municipal sites. This small city is able to integrate significant digital systems because it doesn’t have to pay to develop the fibre infrastructure – NBTel and Aliant already did it.
That network enabled the Saint John Police Force to be one of the first in Canada to adopt an intelligent policing strategy, which uses ICT to identify, analyze and then manage high-risk neighbourhoods and crimes. It was one of the first municipal forces to install mobile devices in squad cars and in 2012, the force will move into a fully networked police headquarters, the most advanced in the region. Intelligent policing helped the police force determine where to locate community policing centres, how to staff patrols and how to work with the community to reduce crime and improve quality of life in the city’s high-crime neighbourhoods.
Back down on Saint John streets, citizens and small businesses interact online, particularly with social media sites Facebook and Twitter, and today a strong concentration of retail shops, restaurants and bars are managing relationships online.
Proof that when private sector innovation meets informed public policy, it is possible to change a culture.
This is a condensed excerpt from Saint John’s application to the Intelligent Communities Forum’s Smart 21 program. You’ll also find it on the Think City blog.
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