Every year Toronto-based professional services firm Deloitte lists the winners of its Technology Fast 50 program. Known as the “Fast 50” list, companies are ranked by revenue growth over a five-year period. For 2014, that growth rate was an astounding 4,746 per cent – much higher than last year’s average of 832 per cent. Each year the list is dominated by innovative technology firms that are quickly building a market for their solutions. This year, the list is also noticeably dominated by Canadian firms offering cloud services. Out of the top 20 firms, 11 are in the business of delivering software as a service in one form or another. We take a look at them in this round-up.
Chango (Toronto)
Rank: #1
Revenue growth: 69,800%
Chango is a real-time-bidding advertising platform that marketers can use to target prospects in various ways. Chango can deploy programmatically-bought ads to video, Twitter, Facebook, and web sites. Founded in 2008, its platform is now making more than 100 billion algorithmic decisions every day.
HootSuite (Vancouver)
Rank: #2
Revenue growth: 56,514%
Founded in 2008, HootSuite offers a web-based social media management dashboard. It’s mostly used by marketers and customer service professionals to monitor Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and other social channels and engage with customers. Users can schedule their posts, automate posting with RSS feeds, and receive analytical reports on their activity.
Shopify (Ottawa)
Rank: #3
Revenue growth: 16,759%
What began in 2004 as software intended to serve as a way to sell snowboards online is today used by thousands of merchants around the world for inventory management and e-commerce. The e-commerce platform has launched its own app store that features hundreds of add-ons from third-party vendors and has processes billions in sales for its clients.
Dejero Labs Inc. (Waterloo, Ont.)
Rank: #4
Revenue growth: 14,299%
Dejero solves the problem of broadcasting live video to a cross-platform audience with its streaming platform, Live+. Its cloud server can handle the intake of video feeds or clips and output it simultaneously at three different resolutions and audio bitrates so viewers can comfortably watch no matter what their device or bandwidth limitations. Dejero also sells the hardware needed to broadcast live from on-location.
ScribbleLive (Toronto)
Rank: #9
Revenue growth: 5,857%
This real-time content engagement platform has become a popular choice for news organizations delivering real-time event coverage to the web. Its conversation platform combines text updates with interactive features such as polling, social media posts, photos, and video. The company was founded in 2008.
Clio (Burnaby, BC)
Rank: #10
Revenue growth: 5,499%
Clio is a cloud software for legal practice management. It helps lawyers track their time, bill clients for their time spent on projects, and collaborate with secured document transfers. Every day lawyers using Clio complete a combined 6,000 tasks, create 25,000 contracts, and receive 5,000 payments.
360incentives (Whitby, Ont.)
Rank: #11
Revenue growth: 5,339%
360 is a product that manages incentives and rebates that a company offers for its product sales. Vendors use custom portals to issue incentives and spread awareness of them. Sales people and channel partners then submit their sales, which are audited, and then paid out automatically. As for company culture, 360 says it’s all about happiness.
Firmex (Toronto)
Rank: #13
Renvue growth: 1,268%
Firmex offers virtual data rooms that targets the financial sector. Its solution is all about secure document sharing and collaboration for confidential files that pertain to big corporate transactions such as mergers an acquisitions, loans, and regulatory compliance. The company was founded in 2006.
Securefact (Toronto)
Rank: #14
Revenue growth: 1,135%
Another cloud solution for financial transactions, Securefact is focused on placing liens, managing workflow, and reducing manual processes. Its services include a Legal Entity Validator that provides the legal name and status of a corporation, partnership, government body, or association. Attestanet is a solution that allows banks to more easily onboard commercial clients by automating compliance requirements.
Miovision Technologies Inc. (Kitchener, Ont.)
Rank: #19
Revenue growth: 749%
Miovisions offers solutions all focused on doing one thing – monitoring traffic. The real kind with cars too, not web traffic. Its data platform allows the upload of video and traffic data, then access to it using a map interface. Users also have the option to share reports and data with clients and colleagues on the platform with a custom-branded portal.
Achievers (Toronto)
Rank: #20
Revenue growth: 727%
Achievers is HCM cloud software that goes beyond onboarding, training, and benefits allotment. Its platform contains social features to allow for collaboration, introduced gamification elements to encourage engagement, and tools to measure it all in real-time. Companies can quickly run employee surveys using the software too.
