Goran Kimovski is chief executive officer of Vancouver-based consulting company, Infostrux.Darryl Dyck/The Globe and Mail
In today’s digital economy, every online interaction, purchase and post results in reams of data. Yet, knowledge and insight from these huge volumes of information can be hard to come by.
It’s a problem Vancouver-based Infostrux, a consulting firm focused on delivering data solutions in the cloud, has set out to solve.
The company provides data engineering – the building of systems to enable the collection and usage of digital information – to help companies make better business decisions, says Goran Kimovski, Infostrux’s chief executive officer.
“It’s the ability to get the data from a variety of sources, put it in one central place, and make sure you can rely on the data being accurate, clean of errors and omissions, and consistent,” says Mr. Kimovski, who co-founded the company in 2021 alongside fellow technology entrepreneurs Pankaj Agarwal and Milan Mosny. Mr. Agarwal is an Infostrux adviser and board member, and Mr. Mosny is the company’s chief technology officer.
In its first year, Infostrux became a premier services partner of Montana-headquartered Snowflake – a fully managed software as a service (SaaS) platform – and an elite partner of the well-known brand within 18 months. The partnership has been key to the company’s growth, Mr. Kimovski says.
Infostrux has grown from a team of four to 60 employees since it was founded, serving about 30 clients across Canada and the U.S. across various sectors such as financial services, retail, hospitality and travel.
One challenge in serving clients throughout North America and even the world is ensuring you have staff working in different time zones who can work with those customers during their working hours, he says.
Infostrux has hired data engineers and data architects spanning time zones so they can collaborate with clients wherever they are.
Another challenge is simply building the brand in what is a rapidly growing sector. Mr. Kimovski says Infostrux has worked to establish clients in key markets and then leverage those clients to build the company’s credibility and reputation.
The company focused on Canada during its first year and has made inroads into the U.S. this year in markets such as Philadelphia, Boston and New England. The Snowflake partnership helped accelerate the expansion south of the border, where Infostrux is now eyeing Austin, Chicago, Seattle and parts of California.
Not only is the U.S. market much larger than Canada’s, Mr. Kimovski says, but American companies tend to be earlier adopters of new technology, which also helps with the company’s growth. Working with companies south of the border also helps Infostrux build skills and capabilities that can be provided to its customers back home in Canada.
The company has looked into opportunities in Europe and Latin America, but those are outside of its current focus.
“The North American market is significant enough that we have to remain focused,” Mr. Kimovski says.
Information and communication technology (ICT) service exports from Canada have almost doubled from 2013 to 2020, according to Statistics Canada. In just the past few years, ICT service exports grew 8.9 per cent in 2019, 4.1 per cent in 2020 and 5.9 per cent last year, according to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.
In 2013, Canada’s Trade Commissioner Service established the Canadian Technology Accelerator (CTA) business development program to help homegrown companies with market-ready technology explore global growth opportunities, says Lama Khodr, a spokeswoman for Global Affairs Canada.
She notes the CTA has achieved “notable success” to date, with more than 840 participants reporting $818-million in capital raised, $325-million in new sales, close to 1,400 strategic partnerships and creating more than 3,100 new jobs.
Working across the Canada-U.S. border is relatively seamless for technology companies, says Sal Visca, chief technology officer of Pennsylvania-based Vertex Inc., an Infostrux client working on next-generation data warehousing.
Vertex has contractors all over the world from India to Ukraine, he says. With technology, it just doesn’t matter where an organization is based, he says.
Mr. Visca, a Canadian who previously worked with Mr. Kimovski, says U.S. companies often save money working with Canadian companies given the currency exchange rate. However, he says Vertex was largely drawn by Infostrux’s expertise in using Snowflake for data warehousing.
There is also a lot of strong talent graduating from Canadian universities, Mr. Visca says. He adds that Vertex has just established a Canadian entity and will soon be hiring in Canada.
“We go to where the talent is,” he says.