Future-Proof Your Business & Payments
How did you first get interested in couponing?
When I was in university, I was looking for extra ways to save money as we all know post-secondary schooling can be expensive. I was in school full time and working two part time jobs, but I still was struggling to do the things I loved that required extra funds. I went grocery shopping one day and noticed a large coupon board at the front of the store. It was like a light bulb just went off in my head in that moment. I grabbed coupons for the few of the products I used on a regular basis. I went home and started to figure out how to coupon in Canada.
What do you look for most in an entrepreneur who appears on Dragons’ Den to make you want to invest into their business?
The show attracts numerous talented individuals with innovative business concepts, and while I'm always impressed by the level of creativity displayed, what truly captivates me is a founder's unwavering dedication to their venture. I seek out those who exhibit a deep commitment to their project and are willing to go above and beyond to see it come to fruition — a drive that extends far beyond mere talk. In addition to passion, I prioritize collaboration, and seek out entrepreneurs who understand the value of working as a cohesive team. After all, success is seldomly achieved alone, and I'm eager to invest in individuals who share this belief and are willing to invest their own resources - including time, money, and effort - to see their vision come to life.
Insights from an Inspirational Entrepreneur: An Interview with Kelsie, Founder of SociallyKels
What entrepreneurial tricks have you discovered to keep you focused and productive in your day-to-day busy schedule?
My key to staying productive and on track as an entrepreneur is having two to-do lists. I call them “Master to-do” and “Daily to-do”. As an entrepreneur, there will always be many things on your plate, your master to-do is going to be filled with every little thing you have to do. Each evening I will take a few of the high priority tasks from my master to-do and put it in my daily to do for the next day. That way you can stay on top of what needs to be done and still feel accomplished and able to “clock off” even if there is always something you could be doing.
Too Much is Too Much: Breaking the Cycle of Information Overload for Canadian Entrepreneurs
StartUp Canada is breaking down barriers for entrepreneurs by offering reliable ways to get information instead of trusting the overwhelming amount of information online.
Kayla Isabelle
There’s a lot of data available — some might argue too much data. In fact, it’s estimated that the world will reach 120 zettabytes of created data in 2023 — that’s approximately 70 full smartphones per person for the entire planet. While potentially great news for innovation in technology, it also comes with enormous hurdles for founders. One of these challenges is information overload — the idea that information is being created at a faster rate than we can take advantage of it.
For Canadian founders, this is a problem. According to Startup Canada’s 2022 Census, 43.1 per cent of respondents indicated that finding reliable, specialized information was a roadblock to their success. With entrepreneurs being disproportionately impacted by
the impacts of COVID-19 and the looming recession, there’s an urgent need for collective, vetted, and curated information in this space now more than ever.
In addition to general information overload, getting off the ground with foundational research is a significant barrier for founders. 84 per cent of Census 2021 respondents stated that it took them over 100 hours to research and learn about different components of their business.
Programs like Business Owner’s Toolbox (BOT) are delivering a sustainable solution to this. A free, comprehensive, and interactive hub, BOT is an ever-evolving collection of tailored modules, resources, and access points for early-stage entrepreneurs.
To Startup Canada, the curation of relevant information and resources also includes
in 2023
the development of in-person, hybrid-purpose events to encourage connection, simplify networking, and deliver hyper-specialized and regionally relevant educational material. Startup Canada Tour is a recently announced event series touching down in 5 cities coast to coast, connecting early stage entrepreneurs with local support organizations and industry experts to drive their businesses forward. Without healthy collaboration across all aspects of the support ecosystem and striving for continuous improvement of existing systems via regular information gathering, dissemination and action, entrepreneurs will be hard-pressed to succeed amidst today’s economic climate. These factors should be an urgent priority for the entire entrepreneurial support ecosystem to best serve founders in 2023.
Vincenzo Guzzo CEO, Cinémas Guzzo
Kathleen Cassidy Canadian Coupon Expert,
Kelsie Exley CEO, SociallyKels Agency
Kayla Isabelle CEO, Startup Canada
D.F. McCourt
Working from home is a thing now, in a way it never was before. The back-to-the-office push has moved the needle back on some of the pandemic-inspired changes in how we work, but it’s clear in most industries there’s no appetite for a return to the old normal. Hybrid work environments are here to stay.
For many managers, this has caused a dilemma. They recognize forcing everyone back to the office on a full-time basis is a recipe for unwanted staff turnover, yet their management systems were never built to support a hybrid work environment. The good news is, adapting to this new reality doesn’t need to be painful.
Human resource consulting firms like ENGAGE HR™ have been studying and formalizing hybrid work environment best practices since well before the pandemic. Collaboration with one of these firms can help organizations of any size understand how their pre-existing systems can transition to this new model, identifying cases where the actual cause of friction comes from the underlying systems, which may have been fundamentally flawed to begin with. With a thorough review, there's every reason to be confident an updated approach to culture, performance, and winning behaviours can lead to a hybrid work environment which consistently increases employee engagement, productivity, and profits.
Organizational Culture
Organizational culture as defined in Cultures and Organizations, third edition (2010), by Geert H. Hofstede is “the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one organization from others.”
Much of the anxiety among managers around the shift to a hybrid work environment stems
Innovation Guelph is an
from the concern this transition will be detrimental to their company’s culture in the longer term. This is far from inevitable.
Culture is defined by the values, assumptions, understandings, and norms shared by members of an organization. All of these ideals can flourish in a hybrid work environment — with the right, data driven approach. With a rigorous and evidence-based organizational culture assessment such as those available through Hofstede Insights Canada (canada@hofstede-insights.com), and a corresponding mindset, gaps are identified and followed up with proven, coherent approaches to cultural growth and development. When properly formulated, and linked to organizational strategies, culture can be a powerful driver of individual and organizational performance and sustainability within a hybrid, or any, work environment.
The keys to a successful transition are trust and transparency, coupled with strong organizational values enabled by aligned behaviours, also referred to as competencies. There's no intrinsic conflict here as values, behaviours, and expectations need to be clearly defined and understood and aligned accordingly.
Performance
One of the biggest questions managers have about hybrid work environments is knowing whether or not employees are actually working.
The best resolution to this concern has an almost zen-like quality to it. It’s not a direct answer, rather an investigation of the question itself. Optimal performance, and management thereof has always been about managing results, not the work. Clear expectations, unambiguous role responsibilities, and appropriately agreed upon objectives and deadlines make it work.
These are the moving parts and lubricant of making the engine of performance management purr.
Firms like ENGAGE HR™ have the tools and knowledge to ensure alignment and offer feedback to employees while exploring their potential and strengths, whatever the work environment. They're able to guide organizations in ensuring performance is evaluated consistently and fairly, organization wide. Fairness is the foundation underpinning trust and transparency.
In the end, the move to a hybrid work environment is not an existential threat. If your organization is experiencing anxiety about this change — if it seems like the systems in place are going to break rather than bend — that friction is a sign of opportunity. It means your performance management model was already in need of realignment, which in turn implies a potential for significant gains if the model is conscientiously and professionally overhauled. There are firms out there, firms like ENGAGE HR™, who can help you do just that.
its
company that made our dream possible. The insights provided by our mentor saved us time and money that was crucial at the startup phase of our business.
– New Earth Solutions
How One Canadian AI Company is Driving Digital Transformation in Retail
Vancouver-based Fobi AI is making it easy for operators to keep pace with consumer demands and future-proof their businesses through digital transformation.
Ken Donohue
Many retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) businesses want to connect, enhance, and mobilize their existing, often antiquated, infrastructure through artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and analytics. But most of them don’t know where to start. With over five years as a market leader in automation and mobile wallet technology, Vancouver-based Fobi AI has the knowhow and does all the heavy lifting so that companies can focus on what matters most: their business.
Smart data in motion Fobi has proven experience globally and is working with Canadian companies to change the way they do business. With headquarters in five countries and international operations spanning over 150 nations, Fobi’s dynamic solutions are far-reaching, delivering realtime applications, data-driven insights, and personalized engagement across several global retail use cases, including digital loyalty and membership, coupons, digital ticketing, retail giveaways, and digital age and ID verification.
Society has already embraced digital technology. Consumers are now demanding the same for their retail experiences.
“Retailers don't need more data—they need ways to unlock, leverage, and monetize their data,” says Rob Anson, CEO and Chairman at Fobi AI. “We can take an organization’s data, including its operations and customer interactions, ingest it, and with the click of a button, create value with all that data through AI.”
For most companies, data is cumbersome, expensive to manage, and often challenging to make sense of. Machine learning automates the manual steps that people would normally have to do to complete extensive data analysis to inform their business decisions. The secret sauce for Fobi is its powerful Fobi Data Exchange (FDX), a unified insights platform that automates the ingestion, aggregation, and monetization of point-of-sale data in real-time. These actionable insights help businesses make smarter, more optimized decisions and develop more targeted, personalized marketing campaigns.
AI for all
Complex data is connected and combined from multiple disparate sources, such as point-of-sale, online, offline, and third-
party transaction systems, to which the Fobi Data Exchange can then provide real-time analytics and insights that unlock powerful retailer-to-customer interactions. Segmented on an overall business level or for each store, retailers can visualize these analytics in a customizable dashboard and subsequently build forecasting and predictive models through machine learning algorithms.
This transformational technology isn’t just for the e-commerce giants. Fobi's levelling the playing field by giving brickand-mortar shops access to the same tools and competitive advantage. Businesses of all sizes can now use AI and automation to make data-driven decisions that deliver integrated, omnichannel shopping experiences for customers everywhere.
“People don’t fear AI for what it is. They’re often afraid of change,” says Anson. “But when businesses see what we can do and realize our solutions are plug-and-play, they can appreciate the value of AI and the results that it brings to the table.”
Driving decisions and revenue
Many companies, big and small, don’t know how to leverage their data. But businesses are realizing that by utilizing AI and leveraging it to their advantage, they can unlock even more opportunities to create added value with their data. Being able to effectively segment, action, and monetize data through the wallet pass means that retailers can now deliver personalized shopping experiences at the consumer level, ultimately leading to increased recency, frequency, and wallet share.
“Retailers can connect new promotions based on insights from past purchase behaviour, which is one of the most important indicators for retailers to predict and influence future customer behaviour,” says Anson. “This leads to more tailored and targeted loyalty and membership programs. And the same aggregated data and insights can be anonymized and resold to large thirdparty data aggregators which opens up a brand new revenue stream.”
Personalization and convenience are everything for consumers today, and this puts pressure on retailers to understand their customers’ wants and needs. But currently, there’s little awareness of the full customer journey—what customers bought in the past, how they redeem promotions, and how much they spend.
Anson uses a professional sports team as an example. What does the team know about a season ticket holder? Aside from their contact information, today, customer lifetime value (CLV) in the sports and entertainment industry is largely based on how long fans have had their tickets, how much they’ve spent for those seats, and the value of those seats over time. But what if the team
actively had real-time insight into the person’s food and beverage preferences and spend, merchandise purchases, or how they travel to games?
Through AI and automation, Fobi delivers the interoperability to unify data across the team’s disparate systems, such as parking, tickets, merchandise, food and beverage, and more, to get a better understanding of fans at a transactional level. As a result, these insights can help businesses drive enhanced customer engagement by sending hyper-personalized offers and recommendations that are more likely to resonate and convert at the till. Personalization is also proven to drive increased visits, sales, and brand affinity with better targeted marketing campaigns and more cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.
One-tap vision
Fobi uses app-less wallet pass technology that brings integrated mobile experiences right into the palms of retail customers. It delivers direct-to-consumer engagement and communication through the lock screen, enabling segmented and real-time SMS/ push notifications. AI introduces significant opportunities for increased momentum and utilization of mobile wallet passes and payments. “Our system is enabling one scan for ID verification, payment, and loyalty,” says Anson. “It streamlines the customer experience, opens a new, direct channel for personalization and communication, and enables retailers to make data-driven decisions.”
In addition, Fobi’s AI forecasting tools are helping businesses achieve digital sustainability and carbon neutrality by minimizing product inventory in-store and removing legacy, physical on-premise infrastructure. Digitally transforming businesses and the way they engage today’s mobile-first customers eliminates the need for paper (coupons, tickets, giveaways) and reduces unnecessary plastic waste, such as traditional loyalty and membership cards.
“We make it easy for retailers to transform the way they measure and attribute customer engagement, and provide them with a future-proof investment that drives ROI for their marketing campaigns,” he says. “Society has already embraced digital technology — in our homes, at work, and in our cars. Consumers are demanding the same for their retail experiences. As the world continues to test how far digitalization can really go, Fobi is already raising the bar for innovation, providing the next evolution of retail through automation and AI.”
Rob Anson CEO & Chairman, Fobi AI
There Is Cause To Be Optimistic About Women-Owned Businesses
Despite the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is evidence that women entrepreneurs are gaining ground, according to the latest annual State of Women’s Entrepreneurship (SOWE) in Canada 2023 Research Preview, which synthesizes new research on women entrepreneurship in Canada to inform policy and practice. Although there are gaps in the data, majority women-owned businesses appear to be a growing proportion of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Averaging the quarterly Canadian Survey on Business Conditions reports, researchers at the Women Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub (WEKH) estimate that 18 per cent of all businesses, including SMEs and large businesses, are majority owned by women in Canada (SMEs account for 99.8 per cent of these). Previous research showed that 16.8 per cent of SMEs in 2020 were majority women-owned, an increase from 15.6 per cent in 2017. Another study, from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, indicated that the gap between women and men in terms of entrepreneurial intent is narrowing.
Wendy Cukier, the report’s lead researcher and founder of the Diversity Institute at the Ted Rogers School of Management, said, “Despite the threat COVID-19 presented to their very survival, women entrepreneurs adapted and pivoted. Not only are they narrowing the gap with men entrepreneurs in terms of ownership of SMEs, but also in innovation and export.”
Despite the threat COVID-19 presented to their very survival, women entrepreneurs adapted and pivoted.
SMEs account for almost 90 per cent of private sector employment in Canada, compared to 50 per cent in the U.S. and this needs to inform our strategies for economic growth, innovation, sustainability, and inclusion. While large corporations tend to dominate discussions, entrepreneurs, including women entrepreneurs, are critical. We need to better understand their impact and to help them start-up and scale up their businesses. Definitions matter. Historically, a women entrepreneur was defined as a majority owner of an SME. According to that definition, in
2017, about 15.6 per cent of SMEs were majority owned by women, which translates to about 110,000 enterprises. But WEKH research showed that women entrepreneurs, as well as Indigenous and Black entrepreneurs, are less likely to incorporate their businesses. Almost 40 per cent of self-employed Canadians are women, accounting for almost one million entrepreneurs. The origin stories of women-owned SMEs are often different than those of men — often they start as self-employment or a side gig. We need to support them where they are. There are still opportunities for improvement — the report highlights the evidence of increased barriers faced by Indigenous, racialized and Black entrepreneurs, as well as that immigrant women are more likely to be entrepreneurs than others. While it is true some newcomers are “pushed” into entrepreneurship because they are excluded from mainstream employment or face hostile work environments, many are “pulled” and would choose entrepreneurship over employment. Among South Asian entrepreneurs, for example, there is near gender parity with women representing 46.3 per cent. Women account for more than one-third (33.4 per cent) of Black entrepreneurs.
Nadine Spencer, CEO of the Black Business and Professional Association (BBPA) and a WEKH partner organization, has led research that showed that the COVID-19 pandemic hit Black businesses twice as hard as other businesses, while they had access to fewer resources needed to survive. “Thanks to the research by WEKH and investments in the Black Entrepreneurship Strategy, we are working to level the playing field,” Spencer said. “Black women face even more barriers. Yet their entrepreneurial spirit is strong. The BBPA-led ‘Rise up’ competition for Black women, for example, attracted 1,700 women vying for eight $10,000 prizes. While I am thrilled for the 24 finalists, we need to find ways to provide opportunities and support for the other 1,676 women who want to start and scale their businesses.”
Canada’s Women Entrepreneurship Strategy (WES) is unique because it brings a “whole of government” approach to supporting women. This is not just a job for Innovation, Science and Economic Development or Canada’s regional development agencies. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is now focused on ways to support women in
Small businesses are the engine of the economy, and when small businesses fail, our shared economy fails.
farming and in agritech. Natural Resources
Canada is focused on how to support women in greentech and in the businesses needed to drive toward net zero. Canada has stepped up its efforts through Procurement Assistance Canada to provide opportunities for women and other diverse entrepreneurs to access the government’s massive spending on products and services. Moreover, recent investments by WES have included targeted financing, support for ecosystem players and intermediaries, and a new program focused on creating a more inclusive venture capital sector. Programs focused on promoting technology adoption and training for entrepreneurs are more accessible to women and diverse entrepreneurs. And programs are being constantly refined to ensure they meet their goals.
More than one-half of entrepreneurs start with less than $5,000 in funding, and yet it is hard to access small grants and loans, particularly for women over the age of 30.
“We need innovative programs to support women and new ways of thinking about our priorities,” said Cukier. “The tech sector is key to growth and innovation, but it’s also high risk. People think nothing of investing in high-risk technology ventures with failure rates exceeding 90 per cent, but it’s hard for some women to get even $1,000 to get their business started. We are undertaking more research to help us better understand the impact of small investments on community economic development, sustainability and inclusion.”
Cukier cautioned, “Small businesses are the engine of the economy, and when small businesses fail, our shared economy fails.”
