If the last pizza you ordered arrived hot at your door, you have a Canadian invention to thank for it.

By Gail Balfour

Today Pizza Pizza is a household name and one of the biggest success stories in Canada, with 28 million customer orders a year in more than 500 locations across the country. But in 1967 it was just a single 300-square-foot store at the intersection of Parliament and Wellesley in Toronto. How did the company grow to where it is today? It was largely due to branding and creative use of technology, according to George Jeffrey, vice-president of enterprise development at Pizza Pizza.

Working with a car upholstery firm, the company invented the world’s first insulated pizza delivery bag in 1967. “It was a simple thing, but it was an innovation,” Jeffrey said. It was to be the first of many such inventions from the company. The now famous “11-11” phone number was no small feat when it came on the scene in 1975: one-number calling systems were almost unheard of in those days.

It was so successful, especially after Burton Cummings produced the jingle that made the phone number a Canadian icon, that the company was having trouble keeping up with the demand. In 1979 it designed the first computerized order-taking and central phone system. Without a centralized call centre, it could have never expanded as rapidly as it did across Canada, Jeffrey said. It allowed the company to take orders much more efficiently, and without the huge staffing investment that would have been required otherwise.

Jeffrey was one of four panellists at a recent roundtable in Toronto hosted by Microsoft Canada. They were gathered to discuss a recent mid-size business survey conducted by Info Tech Research Group and released by Microsoft. Of the 200 business executives polled, two-thirds cited the use of technology to improve staff productivity and efficiency as the number one growth enabler.

One reason for this may be that smaller businesses now have better access to decision support software, offerings that were typically only available to large businesses in the past, said Jill Schoolenberg, general manager of small and medium business at Microsoft Canada, in Mississauga, Ont., and moderator of the panel.

“Clearly, Canadian small, mid-size and large companies alike, although they face different opportunities and challenges, recognize the limitless growth potential offered by the strategic use of IT.”

Another panellist, Ted Maulucci, CIO of Toronto-based Tridel Corp., said when new laws caused the condo market to explode in the early ’70s, his company was almost overwhelmed by the sudden demand. At first, all the information needed to close condo deals was sent to its law firm on paper. It was demanding, expensive and time consuming, and there were version control issues.

“We were terrified we would double-sell units. We needed a common data source,” Maulucci said.

The company started out by automating some of its documents. “Now we are not even handing out documents at all. We can close hundreds of deals, send them to a document server and go home. This is a huge productivity gain, and would have taken a law assistant hours, even days, in the past,” he said. “It also cut out an enormous amount of paper, printing and courier costs. We have $130,000 of hard savings every year. And the volume of sales has doubled.” Today, the Tridel group of companies is responsible for building more than 66,500 homes, and the sales arm processes as many as 500 transactions in a single day.

Get ready, get set
A third panellist, Peter Hwang, founder and CEO of Toronto-based Enwise Power Solutions, said having an established growth plan upfront and investing in some basic tools saved his company from being overwhelmed by customer demand from the beginning. Founded in 2006, the power company found a niche after the utility market deregulated. It offers competitively priced utility packages to customers, and tech-savvy solutions like customer invoices on a USB key. It started off with a small staff, but set up an automated service to answer messages promptly. This turned out to be a crucial decision.

“Within a few days of launching we had more than 400 Web inquiries. I am not sure what we would have done (if we had not had tools in place.) We would have lost those calls.”

Success stories aside, the fact is that a great many Canadian companies will not make it past the three-year mark, said John Reid, president and co-chair of Ottawa-based high-tech collaborative association CATA Alliance, who was also on the panel.

“Canadian companies today still often don’t know where their next obstacle or opportunity is coming from. But if you are in a position to respond quickly there will be less fatality.” Canadians in general are slow to adapt to new technologies, but that is not the case with social networking and other Web 2.0 functions, Reid said. These will likely play an important role in business going forward, especially as younger people make their way into the workforce.

“There is tremendous opportunity here for young smart people to do wonderful things. This is the kind of culture we have to foster here: one of entrepreneurship. You don’t need to create all the technologies from scratch (anymore); it is possible to bring technology together from different areas to create something new.”

Focus on growth
Carmi Levy, senior vice-president of strategic consulting at AR Communications, based in Thornhill, Ont., said Canadian companies, especially smaller ones, are often not focused on growth. This is a mistake. Software that can give them visibility into their processes should be seen as an investment, not a cost.

“You are spending so much time managing the minutiae of your day-to-day business, the tactical elements, that you are frankly wasting your time trying to piece them all together. You simply have no time or resources to do the critical type of strategic thinking or planning that will ultimately drive the growth of your business,” he said. “Strategic software investment allows you to look at the big picture, and manage your resources much more effectively than if you were up to your ears in paper and spreadsheets.”

Randall Craig, president of Toronto-based consulting firm Pinetree Advisors, said technology allows functions that couldn’t be done before, like very targeted recruiting through Web sites such as LinkedIn. It is easier these days to make staff searches more individualized; fewer résumés come in, but those you do get will be more appropriate to the job. In addition, most people in the workforce are now tech savvy enough to know the basics, so companies need to spend less time and money on training in general.

“Even more sophisticated software like CRM is starting to be commonplace and easy for new employees to learn, because they may have used similar packages elsewhere.”

It’s great to have strategic goals for your business, but don’t stick too rigidly to the plan, he said. It’s important to leave room to stumble onto greatness that you may not have anticipated. “If you only concentrate on your future goals alone, you ignore a lot of the innovation that may be possible. Imagine Facebook 15 years ago.”

Levelling the playing field
John Galligan, manager of operations at Ottawa-based consulting firm Workshift.com, said the number of small businesses that have grown up on the Internet is starting to level the playing field, and in the last five years it has allowed Canadian small businesses to compete on a global scale.

“Many of us were here five years ago, but (the rest of the world) just couldn’t see us. But the Internet is a great leveller in that way,” he said.

“It also allows the intelligence and the creativity that is really out there to come more to the surface. This is something that you might not see if all you have is big companies. Larger companies are often following a model, and may lose out on all the creativity that a smaller shop can command, and [it can] think outside the box. A larger company, well, they have a box for a reason: a tried, tested, bulletproof type of thing. It works for them. They can cost it; they can sell it.”

Galligan agreed with Reid that social networking, YouTube and other Web 2.0 offerings will continue to change the face of business. “The younger generations coming into the workforce now, that’s how they work. The newer generation already has that mindset. So we are looking at how that affects how we do things and how we sell things.”

Not all companies are on board with this idea yet though, because to some degree it is an intangible. They can’t hold it in their hands, and can’t easily measure its reach like they can with direct mail, for example. And, unfortunately, it is often still seen by many as a productivity hindrance rather than a tool.

“It’s a different metric. It’s still seen as water cooler chat, as opposed to getting the work done.”

Canadian businesses optimistic about future; staffing main concern

> Two-thirds of businesses plan to expand in 2008
> Only three per cent expect contraction
> The top business challenge faced by Canadian business is staffing
> Large companies lead substantially in the establishment of technology plans
> Adoption rate of technology plans is higher than last year
> The desire to further deploy technology plans is also higher
> Canadian business is surprisingly optimistic about business conditions in 2008
> Only 20 per cent express concerns 

Source: Info Tech Research 2008