BUSINESS 2.0

The IT department was once seen as the domain of geeks--a necessary part of doing business, but hardly a factor in overall strategy. But that view has shifted. Today, technology is an integral part of every company, no matter what sector they're in--from adventure travel to health care to running a railway. Here, we meet five bosses who are using simple technologies to save money, save lives, increase efficiency, make customers happier and revolutionize their businesses.

G.A.P. ADVENTURES

Travel Portal

BY DAWN CALLEJA

When Bruce Poon Tip put together the very first brochure for his new one-man travel company, G.A.P. Adventures, he cut-and-pasted information about his Latin American tours onto a piece of paper and ran it through a photocopier. Then he mailed them to travel agents across Canada. That was 1990. "I had a telex," says Poon Tip. "Technology? We had no real use for it."

Today, G.A.P. (for "Great Adventure People") has $100 million in annual revenue, seven offices worldwide and 400-plus employees. Each year, the company sends 50,000 passengers on adventures to the seven continents and more than 100 countries.

Early on, Poon Tip realized that if he wanted to expand G.A.P.--which conducted all its business through travel agents and toll-free numbers--he would need to reach an international audience. "We were running a holiday company in a country with only two weeks of holidays," he recalls. In 1995, G.A.P. became the first in its sector to build a website. "Instead of being a Canadian company," says Poon Tip, "we became a global player." Still, the internet accounted for only a small portion of its business.

In the next several years, that would change. Still, the company that had been an early adopter struggled to keep up with the Web's rapid growth. Its bare-bones reservation system was upgraded several times and a new in-house operating system developed, because, as Poon Tip says, "I wanted to keep the company as nimble as possible." By 2002, G.A.P. had $50 million in revenue and 50% annual growth, but the company was spending much of its time just keeping the system up and running. A fix was needed. "We're a company that's full of hippies--outside of our iPods, we're not technology people," says Poon Tip. "But we wanted to build a sophisticated system to take us into the next generation."

The three-part project took a team of 11 in-house techies two years to build. But when their on-line reservation system, Compass, went live in April, 2005, it threatened to bring G.A.P. to a standstill. "It was a complete and utter disaster," says Poon Tip. The problem: The company had expanded so rapidly in the time it had taken to finish the project, the system was already overloaded. It took another three months to point Compass in the right direction. Now, it's a slick interface that lets wannabe adventurers browse through 1,000-plus trips, check tour dates, watch videos and slide shows, read reviews and, of course, book not just the tour itself, but also additional flights, transfers and extensions.

Because travel agents still account for 60% of its business, the second part of G.A.P.'s IT project was an interface that simplified the booking process for them. Before Sherpa, as the system is called, Poon Tip says that putting together an adventure tour was an adventure in itself: To book a trip to the Galapagos, say, the agent would have to search for flights, hotels, ground transportation and local tours, plus call Ecuador about visas. With Sherpa, he says, "an agent in Belgium can sell someone a trip to the Galapagos in real time." More than 20,000 travel agents use the system.

The final piece of G.A.P.'s system caters to 300-plus tour leaders in over 100 countries. "We used to feed them all information via fax and mail," says Poon Tip. "It was expensive and ridiculously time-consuming." G.A.P.'s tour-leader website allows guides to access schedules, budgets, company procedures, even passenger feedback, via the internet. It also handles payroll. "The website has brought together our network of leaders around the world," says Poon Tip. It also helps G.A.P. control costs--if a tour leader goes overbudget, it pings head office.

True, G.A.P.'s system was expensive to build. "And it's much more expensive to maintain--we have 14 IT people. It's a luxury," says Poon Tip. "A lot of IT people who work in profit-driven businesses would come here and call me crazy. But our system is invaluable."

One day, Poon Tip plans to sell G.A.P.'s technology platform to other companies. But for now, he's focusing on building his roster of adventures (and G.A.P.'s private fleet--it owns an icebreaker in the Antarctic, one ship in the Amazon, five in the Galapagos, and four sailboats in Greece). "I always say it doesn't take a rocket scientist to run a good tour," says Poon Tip. "Technology is at the forefront of our agenda. We're becoming more of a tech company than a grassroots travel company. I haven't even begun to take this G.A.P. where I want it to go."

GREAT CANADIAN GAMING

Internet Phones

By Craig Silverman

There was a time when telephones were the last thing Gary Ward wanted to think about. As IT director for Great Canadian Gaming Corp., he fielded a ridiculous number of calls in 2004, when the company was building its 222-suite River Rock Casino Resort, near Vancouver. "It seemed like I was getting 200 calls a day," he says. "I stopped answering my desk phone."

His phone pains were part of a larger problem. The company's entire communications system--a mishmash of landline phones and cellphones from different vendors and service providers--was way out of date and unable to cope with the growing volume of calls. The B.C.-based company, which now operates 12 casinos and five horse racing tracks in Canada and the U.S., had more than doubled its operations in just two years. Great Canadian needed a system that would allow it to easily add phones at new and existing locations, to outfit staff with wireless handsets instead of cellphones, and to deliver attractive next-generation services to hotel guests. The solution: Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.

Rather than plugging into a conventional copper phone line, VoIP phones hook up to the same network you use to surf the internet; calls are translated into digital "packets" and sent to their destination via broadband. "We needed something to operate in a 24/7 environment that was totally secure and could easily expand," Ward says. "VoIP looked like the best thing."

Three of the company's major gaming properties in B.C., along with some of its smaller sites, have been equipped with more than 400 phones. Eventually, the system will be loaded with roughly 2,000 handsets for the company's 5,200 employees--everyone from the CEO to front-desk personnel and hospitality reps roaming the casino floor--plus hundreds more devices for hotel guests. The system lets employees communicate with different locations--even different cities--using four-digit dialling. The move to VoIP also makes things easier (and cheaper) for Ward's team, because phones and computers share a single network connection. "We can wire a space for a single network jack--we don't have to wire for a separate phone line," he says.

As for actual cash savings, they've been nominal--about $800 a month--and the cost to install the system was similar to wiring for normal phone lines. But Ward says it's easier for the IT team to manage, and gives staff more flexibility. Then there are the guests. One major benefit of VoIP is that Great Canadian can offer a range of services for the dreaded hotel-room phone. For starters, guests will be able to view video and room-service menus on the screens of in-room handsets. "Everybody has been screwed-over by a hotel phone bill at least once," says Ward. "This is a way to bring people back to using their room phone."

DR. MICHELLE GREIVER

E-Health Records

By Terrence Belford

Dr. Michelle Greiver is an unlikely medical pioneer. The family doctor might not be up there with Louis Pasteur or Frederick Banting, but she's at the forefront of a medical revolution. In the spring, Greiver trashed the 13-year-old desktop PCs and dot-matrix printer that sat in her Toronto office and installed new hardware and software. The software, designed by Nightingale Informatix Corp. of Markham, Ontario, automates daily tasks and creates a single source of patient data.

With that move--subsidized by the Ontario government, which will pick up 70% of the $30,000 tab--Greiver became one of 700 Ontario MDs to enter the age of electronic health records since funding was announced this spring. Thanks to the MyNightingale system, Greiver and the eight other physicians in the Family Health Network she belongs to can maintain patient records in digital form and swap information through an internet portal. Their computers also connect them with the province's three largest laboratories. That means no more lost or delayed X-rays; instead, images are delivered straight to Greiver's computers. The doctors can also do billing and scheduling with the software, and even add prompts--flags that remind them what to do when a patient shows symptoms of a specific disease. "The old paper-based system interfered with patient care," Greiver says. "We were drowning in a sea of paper."

Only 1.5% to 2% of health-care spending goes toward computer technology, compared with 12% for banks and 6% for retail, according to Canada Health Infoway (a government organization created to drag health care into the digital age). But governments across Canada are determined to change that. Alberta leads the pack--Premier Ralph Klein has said he wants all of the province's 3,500 physicians to be on-line with e-health records by 2008. Last February, Ontario's health ministry handed $80 million to the Ontario Medical Association to fund e-records initiatives for the province's 17,000 practising physicians. The grants--which can be spent on any one of 19 approved systems--total up to $28,600, paid in three stages. Greiver, for example, got a $4,500 lump sum when she bought five new computers and signed with Nightingale. She'll also receive $600 a month for the first 36 months the system is up and running.

Founded in 2003, Nightingale now has some 5,000 physicians handling one million patients across North America. "Physicians don't have the knowledge or budgets to manage a technical infrastructure," says CEO Sam Chebib. There's something in it for patients, too--they can access their Nightingale file to set up appointments, review their chart and even get lab reports, Chebib says. "It gives patients power over their records."

LOCAL HEALTH INTEGRATION NETWORKS

Outsourcing

By Craig Silverman

When Dalton McGuinty's Ontario government passed the Local Health System Integration Act in March, 2007, it created 14 new organizations to manage and oversee heath-care services. These regional non-profit corporations--local health integration networks, or LHINs--were to manage every hospital, home-care organization and long-term-care facility in Ontario.

The Erie St. Clair LHIN, based in Chatham, Ontario, found itself searching for a CEO. It eventually hired Gary Switzer, the former COO of Virgin Mobile Canada and a seasoned telecom executive. Switzer had recently spent several months navigating Ontario's health system, while caring for his fiancée, who had been diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. "Though we received great care and attention," he says, "there were areas that could benefit by introducing best practices, technology and better communication."

Switzer saw a perfect opportunity when he was put in charge of evaluating and selecting technologies for all 14 newly created LHINs. They were looking to set up 14 separate payroll, invoicing and finance systems, as well as buy computers and find companies to service them. Each network would have had to hire 20 to 25 employees to handle it all. Switzer and his team quickly recognized the advantage of outsourcing those functions to a sole provider. "It would have taken way too many people for each LHIN to provide these services individually," he says. "More importantly, we wouldn't be able to get the same quality and depth of expertise if the services were provided by 14 different organizations."

The contract went to CGI, which provides similar services to health-care networks in other parts of the country. It now manages the LHINs' data centre, services roughly 400 computers, operates a technical support line, and oversees the payroll, finance and accounting for 400 LHIN employees and all of their suppliers. "We're still responsible for approving all expenditures, but the actual processing, reconciliation and reporting is completed by CGI," says Switzer. "We know our back is covered in the backroom." And that leaves LHIN staff free to focus on making sure Ontario's health-care system is working at peak performance.

CN RAIL

Mobile Work-Stations

By Craig Silverman

CN's North American rail network is a web of 30,900 kilometres of track that last year carried 4.8 million carloads of freight. It connects three coasts, from the Pacific to the Atlantic and south to the Gulf of Mexico. From its headquarters in Montreal, CN monitors each train, car and piece of cargo as it crisscrosses the continent.

The man charged with creating and managing the systems that help keep the trains running on time is Fred Grigsby, CN's senior VP and CIO. Every minute counts: CN measures its performance in hours, rather than the old industry standard of days. Any unnecessary downtime can cause a backup on the line--and that costs money. "This company requires a lot of data to run its operations," says Grigsby. "At the end of the day, it comes down to getting the right information to the right place at the right time."

Yet the company's 1,000 or so roving track inspectors and foremen weren't getting enough of that kind of information to do their jobs efficiently. While out on the tracks doing repairs and inspections, they were cut off from the critical scheduling and reporting details that could help them get their work done faster. As part of a larger project that efficiency-obsessed CN calls "Precision Engineering," the company decided to equip its on-the-ground employees with mobile workstations that would give them real-time access to maintenance and inspection orders, as well as schedules. Starting in 2007, every supervisor's vehicle will be equipped with a mobile workstation, including a laptop that can connect to CN's network and a GPS unit that helps them prioritize schedules and repairs based on location.

Of the many challenges his team faced, Grigsby says the toughest was paring down the amount of data that managers in the field had to deal with. Under CN's old system, they had to work through eight or nine different computer screens, filling in the blanks as they went. When a manager is sitting in a truck next to the tracks, that's impractical. So Grigsby's team figured out how to condense everything onto a single screen, customized for each user.

Along with improving efficiency and reducing downtime, Grigsby says the workstations will improve employees' quality of life. "I can't overstate the importance of giving supervisors the tools to communicate with our systems while sitting by the railway," he says. "They can come off the track and be done with their work, without having to report back to a regional office." The fact that this will save CN a bundle on wages is a welcome bonus.

THE FUTURE IS DEEP

Don Lindsay

CEO, Teck Cominco

"The mining industry faces two challenges: finding high-quality mineral deposits in mature or remote locations, and turning those deposits into long-life mines--even when faced with increasingly complex metallurgical and environmental issues. Teck Cominco uses innovative methods to recover metals and difficult ores at the mine site, in an environmentally friendly way. Most base-metal refining is done through smelting, which releases major quantities of sulphur dioxide into the air. Our hydrometallurgical process has shown that several base metals can be refined without producing sulphur-dioxide gas. There are many promising technologies out there, but the greater challenge may be finding the people to implement them--explorers, engineers, processors, refinery operators and product developers. Teck Cominco puts increasing emphasis on developing our technical people."

THE FUTURE IS WIRELESS

John Roese

CTO, Nortel Networks

"One of the next big things in business is WiMax--a mobile broadband technology that will give users 'internet everywhere' and provide access to any application from any location, using any device. WiMax will allow billions of people and things--not just cellphones, PDAs and laptops, but anything that's IP-enabled, including cars, homes, medical instruments, environmental-control systems, MP3 players, security systems--to be connected to an intelligent and secure mobile broadband network.

Imagine the possibilities of an intelligent network that can send real-time video to emergency responders or medical personnel during a disaster, or an MP3 player that can connect to your social network anywhere, any time. Nortel owns significant intellectual-property rights in the technologies underlying the WiMax standard. And our WiMax solution can deliver three times the speed and efficiency at one-third the cost of other solutions."

THE FUTURE IS TINY

Annette Verschuren

CEO, Home Depot Canada

"In the long term, we hope to host a number of revolutionary products based on nanotechnology. Here are a few examples of how it's impacting us, or will impact us, at home:

- The silver ions in Samsung's SilverCare washer, created through nanotechnology, eliminate 99.9% of tested bacteria. Consumers can sanitize their clothes in cold water without chemicals.

- Researchers in the U.S. used nanotech to create RCLED light, which they claim is 2.5 times brighter than LED. Could this lead to a bulb that uses 1% of the electricity of incandescent bulbs?

- Companies like Konarka and Nanosys are working on novel photovoltaic structures that are more like photosynthesis than semiconductor solar-cell devices. In theory, this means they could capture more of the sun's energy than the best solar products on the market today.

- Applications for nano products include ceramics based on nanocrystalline aluminium oxide and zirconia-toughened alumina--in other words, really tough floor coverings."

THE FUTURE IS FRIENDLY

Heather Ross

CIO, TD Bank Financial Group

"Businesses are driven to provide greater value to customers and shareholders. So we need to continually think through how we can simplify and streamline our services. Technology plays a key role in making that happen.All TD Bank divisions can provide full service through any interaction point a customer chooses. For example, EasyWeb, TD Canada Trust's electronic banking service, lets our customers manage many aspects of their portfolio in the manner they choose. Our new bank machines, on-line WebBroker trading platforms, as well as the many electronic capabilities we provide to our branch personnel, all focus on providing a more comfortable, simpler and, in turn, better customer experience."