Who will win the category? Attend the Digital Transformation Conference and Awards on Aug. 8 and find out.
Morison Insurance Brokers
When an organization looks to undergo a digital transformation, having leadership willing to buy in and take that risk is an essential ingredient.
But for Fred and Jill Morison, the owners of Morison Insurance Brokers, they say that it came naturally to them and that they never really saw it as a risk, but rather an evolution of how they operate their business.
After hiring consultants from Aviva’s Digital Garage to assist in forming a digital transformation plan, they began to implement their plans.
The digital transformation at Morison Insurance Brokers took a few different forms: hiring digital marketing experts, retooling their sales staff to thrive in a digital age, building digital tools for potential customers to apply for insurance policies through, and implementing a customer relationship management and lead management system.
And although the implementation of these digital-centric processes and tools does change the way of doing business – and adds a new layer for their employees to embrace – Jill Morison says that the essential traits they look for in new employees remains the same, but it does require individuals who are open to change and learning new skills.
“A lot of the skills that are required are the same skills that have always been required of a broker,” said Jill Morison. “When you’re looking for people who want to be involved in the digital part of it, you look for folks who have a desire to be involved in something that’s new, something that moving forward quickly. It brings a new aspect to the hiring process and the interview, but a lot of those other skills still remain and they’re vital. You still have to be a very good broker.”
SmartONE Solutions Inc.
Families and individuals searching for a new home no longer evaluate their options based only on traditional physical attributes. Millions of connected, chattering devices are found in the home in the form of smart speakers, fridges, TVs, and even thermometers. A new house or apartment has to accommodate these technologies.
SmartONE’s president Ted Maulucci formed the smart community vision more than 15 years ago when he was the chief information officer for Tridel, a large multi-family developer. But it was only when he arrived at SmartONE that he was able to take the idea to another level. In two years, SmartONE Solutions has grown to over 5,000 homes under contract, with another 32,000 under negotiation. SmartONE Solutions was first piloted more than five years ago, and last year, the Ten York Community in Toronto adopted SmartONE. The company was also recently awarded government funding to support the installation of the SmartONE solution into research labs in Universities across Canada.
Fresh Tracks Canada
Fresh Tracks Canada is a Canadian-destination travel company. Before its digital transformation, they were a small company with 22 people.
The company’s entire platform was custom-built on FileMaker, which integrated thousands of unique products, costs, and trips that were combined to produce quotes and itineraries for guests. But over time, Fresh Tracks realized the underlying data was fragmented, buggy, and had the potential to be inadvertently taken down by any user. It also made scaling difficult.
So the company took a risk – they replaced FileMaker with four fully integrated systems, a new website, and a new brand. Today, the company has a headcount of 90 and growing regularly.
CanImmunize
Eight years ago, CanImmunize had a vision – build a mobile solution to allow Canadians to track their own immunizations.
This naturally caught the attention of public health officials who supported the development of a pan-Canadian version on iOS (ImmunizeCA) that received the Connected with the Community Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Award. A more mature version of the solution was developed with the help of IBM years later.
CANImmunize has also been identified as a leading practice by the Health Standards Organization. To date there have been close to 300 000 downloads of the app and it has a 4.7 rating on the App Store.
L&T Infotech Financial Service
Prior to its digital transformation process, L&T Infotech’s multi-tenant transfer agency record keeping platform had green screens and a Java-based web front end.
A decision was made to shift its SaaS Wealth Management platform, Unitrax, to an ecosystem of microservices that provided a redesigned product suite to help clients drive better business operations. This meant leaning on the cloud for certain products to help them scale, as well as introducing self-service reporting solutions.
The move led to both revenue growth through new product offerings, and internal cost savings through automation and re-skilling of employees who could now focus on higher-value opportunities. Productivity also ended up rising by 20 per cent.