Tag: ITBusiness.ca

West coast skin care company leverages cloud to support U.S. expansion [Byline]

/ Gary Hilson

Expanding into new markets is a challenge in and of itself, but when it’s a complex business and your financial management software can’t keep up, it’s time to make some changes.

Vancouver-based Skoah Inc. is a small chain of shops that offer facial products and treatments to its customers in 15 stores, some of which are franchises. Company president Christ Scott said that as the company looked to expand to the United States, those complexities could not be accommodated by its QuickBooks accounting software – it didn’t integrate with its Point-of-Sales (PoS) system.

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.

Gary Hilson is a freelance writer with a focus on B2B technology, including information technology, cybersecurity, and semiconductors.

Canada a bright spot for tech investment in 2016 [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

Canada wrapped up 2016 on a high note when it came to investment in venture capital-backed companies, according to a recent report, bucking the global trend of a 10 per cent decline in deals and a 23 per cent drop in total funding compared to 2015.

The MoneyTree Report from PwC Canada and CB Insights shows that deals and dollars were up in the last quarter of the year, with the number of deals increasing seven per cent from 248 to 266 in 2016 with total dollars invested equaling $1.7B USD in 2016, less than on per cent lower than last year’s figure. Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.

Waterloo media startup snags Vice Canada CRO [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

The trend toward having a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) is growing, and Waterloo, Ont.-based Sortable has just hired its first by luring a media veteran from Vice Canada.

CROs are essentially responsible for all revenue-generating processes in the organization, said Ryan Fuss, Sortable’s latest employee, and it’s a role that’s become increasingly common in Silicon Valley. Traditionally, revenue generation has been fragmented throughout business units, he said, and there was a need to have a C-level executive overseeing all revenue generation. This includes sales and marketing, and enables a company to fully align to create cohesive plans. “It’s definitely an emerging trend.”

Read my full story on ITBusiness.ca.

Up, Periscope: TVO advances digital transformation via Twitter video platform [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

TV Ontario (TVO)’s The Agenda is broadcasting on a new channel.

As part of the publicly-funded education station’s digital transformation, its flagship current affairs program is now available on Twitter, via Periscope, at the same time it airs on television.

TVO’s choice of Twitter was serendipitous in many ways, said John Ferri, TVO’s VP of current affairs and documentaries. The channel had people attending the Online News Association Conference in the fall, as did Twitter. “They were moving in that direction and thought we would be a good partner,” he said. “We thought the alignment was great because Twitter is a platform that resonates with our existing audience and the audience we’d like to reach.”

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.

B2B firms’ commerce goals outpacing their digital capabilities, study finds [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

Those pesky legacy systems could be costing you a big business deal.

CloudCraze’s recently released 2017 B2B Digital Commerce Imperative Report found that for many B2B brands, legacy commerce systems are proving to be a barrier to digital transformation, preventing organizations from providing the agile, flexible buying experience customers demand.

In fact, the report found that as many as 70 per cent of companies have lost a business deal because of an ordering-specific pain point, and 31 per cent say they’ve missed out on at least $2 million in sales. According to CloudCraze, these numbers reflect an inability to accommodate the complex needs of today’s buyer because as a B2B business, they are relying on outdated commerce systems: More than 65 per cent last updated their systems more than two years ago, before Software-as-Service (SaaS) had matured.

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.

With Outgrow.co, your business can build its own interactive viral content [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

What started as a means to streamline a company’s business development process with an interactive tool has now become its core business.

Five-year-old New York City-based Outgrow.co was always fielding questions from potential customers about pricing for its web and app development services, so it decided to create an interactive online tool to make it simple for a potential client to discover quickly if they are serious about becoming a paying customer.

In the last year, however, this has become Outgrow.co’s focus, said co-founder Pratham Mittal. “It’s hard to build interactive content today. You need designers.” And this equates to high costs and a great deal of time that many businesses don’t have.

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.

Optimizing customer service will be driven by AI and collaboration, Salesforce says [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

The future of exceptional customer service will be a united front powered by artificial intelligence.

That’s the theme of Saleforce’s Second Annual State of Service Report, which surveyed more than 2,600 customer service professionals worldwide to better understand how smart technologies are affecting service protocols and how service leaders are responding to customer expectations.

For example, the report found that 64 per cent of consumers and 80 per cent of business buyers expect companies to respond in real time.

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.

Diligent’s new tool helps corporate boards evaluate themselves and improve [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

Gone are the days of board members meeting just four times a year to discuss a company’s financial performance. Instead, increasing pressures are prompting the need to make sure everyone is well prepared and handling any issues effectively.

That new reality is what drove the launch of New York-based Diligent Corporation’s newest product. The company, which already provides board collaboration and communication tools to more than 4,700 organizations and 140,000 users, including 40 per cent of Fortune 1000 companies, has introduced Diligent Evaluations to make board evaluations easy to administer and analyze for both administrators and directors.

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.

Sun Life feels ready for oncoming “insurtech” [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

There may be a generational divide when it comes to embracing online services for banking and insurance, but for Sun Life, that generational divide is shrinking.

“Everyone is touching a digital channel today,” Cynthia Stark, VP of digital strategy for Sun Life Financial global marketing, tells ITBusiness.ca. “It’s just a degree of comfort and how deep how they will go.”

She would know: Sun Life recently refreshed both its Canadian website and mobile app, and though many customers are only using the company’s online services to review information rather than conduct transactions, it was important that both platforms be able to accommodate as wide a range of users as possible, she says.

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.

CRA to expand EFT audits in 2017, PwC warns [Portfolio]

/ Gary Hilson

The next two years will see an expansion of the Canada Revenue Agency’s efforts to review international funds transfers (EFTs), which means many taxpayers can expect to see an “EFT letter” next year, according to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) Tax Insights brief.

The CRA initiative builds on efforts by the agency that since the beginning of 2015 have required financial intermediaries to report international EFTs of $10,000 or more to the agency. But while the fishing net may be widening, businesses that do things by the book shouldn’t worry, according to Montreal-based PwC partner Marc Vanasse.

“It’s business as usual for those who are reporting to government on fund transfers,” he said.

Read my full article on ITBusiness.ca.