Salesforce Survey: Canadian businesses that invest in tech twice as likelytosee growth
To differentiate yourself as a business today, you really have to have an unquenchable thirst for innovation.
- VALAAFSHAR, CHIEF DIGITALEVANGELIST, SALESFORCE
As Canadian businesses try to keep pace with disruptive technologies and shifting consumer preferences in an increasingly digital, innovation-based economy, two narratives have emerged.
One shows companies with a nimble, forwardthinking approach that embraces technology and leads to rapid growth; the other shows companies who are more reluctant and at risk of being left behind.
“To differentiate yourself as a business today, you really have to have an unquenchable thirst for innovation,” said Vala Afshar, Chief Digital Evangelist for Salesforce, a customer relationship management software company.
“Companies that are growing market share and delighting their customers have gone beyond mobile, social, cloud and analytics.”
Indeed, a recent survey of Canadian business leaders found a close relationship between tech adoption and business growth.
The survey, led by Salesforce and The Gandalf Group, found companies that invested significantly in technology were nearly twice as likely to report significant business growth over the last three years.
Similarly, those companies were more than twice as likely to forecast strong, continued growth over the next 12months.
“My fundamental belief is that every company is a technology company,” saidAfshar.
“We want to help Canadian companies advance toward a future where they’re ready for technology to digitize, not just legacy processes, but also considering new businessmodel innovation.”
If tech-forward thinking is crucial to thriving in the digital economy, many companies appear to be losing ground.
One in three businesses surveyed reported their tech use had become stagnant, with small businesses and legacy sectors like manufacturing, oil-and-gas and agriculture overwhelmingly less likely to say they rely on technology.
In many cases, business leaders didn’t even know where to turn. About half (49 per cent) said they didn’t know where to get practical advice on how to apply technologies like automation, and artificial intelligence (AI).
Another key barrier to tech adoption is a lack of skilled talent — 62 per cent of businesses surveyed said it’s difficult to attract employees with the tech skills needed to thrive.
In addition, 60 per cent said they believe AI and other emerging technologies will replace a significant number of jobs. Rural areas in particular are less likely to embrace tech.
These may be some of the reasons Canada is lagging behind other countries when it comes to implementing AI in business, despite ongoing efforts to nudge the country forward.
The federal government has emphasized science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in its attempt to build an innovation-based economy that is less reliant on natural resources.
This included $950 million in federal funding for technology superclusters, an investment that will be matched dollar-for-dollar by the private sector and is expected to create more than 50,000 jobs over 10 years.
The Business Development Bank of Canada also recently launched a $250 million Industrial Innovation Venture Fund aimed at transforming core industries like agriculture, resource extraction and advancedmanufacturing.
“Transformation is all about adding value,” said Afshar.
“And companies that avoid these emerging technologies, or do not invest in proper re-skilling of existing employees and recruitment of new talent… will unfortunately fall behind in this digital economy.”
The good news is, success stories are increasingly common.
DAVIDsTEA, one of Canada’s leading brands, used technology to scale its business from a single shop in Toronto to a mega-chain with more than 230 physical stores across Canada and the United States.
The company has also used customer relationship management software to grow its e-commerce business, which accounted for about 16 per cent of total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2018.
“As DAVIDsTEA has grown, and as customer expectations have changed, shopping is no longer a linear experience,” said Damon Sloane, the company ’ s v ic e - p r e sident of e-commerce.
“The process can start online or in store, and it can cross over or can interact really simultaneously throughout the experience.
“So because of that rapid shift in customer expectations, the digital experience has become the digital nervous system of retail companies.”
In legacy sectors like manufacturing there have also been gains, despite the generation gap between older and younger, more tech-savvyworkers.
“I see pockets of creativity with some of our clients,” said Don Cooper, CEO of Edmonton-based Innovator Industrial Services Inc.
“And then I equally see some large players who don’t know where to start. I think somewhere in there is the roadmap to bridge that chasm.”
Innovator Industrial has been an early adopter of technology, investing in next-generation equipment and digitizing manual processes like billing and safety audits.
Those improvements make it possible for Cooper to run the business on his smartphone virtually anywhere in the world.
“My advice [to companies that don’t know where to start] is to take on micro projects,” he said.
“Our greatest success hasn’t been the several hundred applications that we built digitally. It was building one, two and three at a time… and taking it in measured steps was really key to building momentum.”