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Sponsored Content • The Chronicle Herald Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Let’s get digital Digitization of Nova Scotia businesses key to growing provincial economy
G
SARA ERICSSON
oing digital is something many businesses have contended with since the initial COVID-19 outbreak period. It’s been discussed at length how the pandemic disrupted and closed most businesses and, when they did reopen, made them pivot with new approaches and increased flexibility to ensure they reached their customer base. Shorter hours, customer capacities and limited sales meant new strategies needed to be adopted — and fast — to foster stability and growth. This is how and why businesses that had yet to move online began thinking about it like never before. It’s also why the Halifax Chamber of Commerce, SimplyCast and Nova Scotia Business Inc. are offering support services to help Nova Scotia get digital. “Keeping business in business and employees at work creates a complete economic cycle that keeps us going to these places,” says Saeed ElDarahali, SimplyCast’s President and CEO.
The Nova Scotia Business Inc. (NSBI) works with Nova Scotia businesses, including Ocean Sonics (pictured here), to help them increase their digital footprint and, ultimately, increase their competitivenes.
AN ALL-IN-ONE PLATFORM
El-Darahali says SimplyCast, located in Dartmouth, began crafting software to support businesses during a potential pandemic in 2017. The software company’s software solution to COVID19 challenges is in the form of a digital check-in used by businesses that uploads a customer’s contact information to a private database, where it remains until it’s sent to public health if needed for contact tracing. This program, along with its all-in-one engagement software that manages sales, marketing, communication and emergency services from a single platform, is currently being offered at no cost for Halifax Chamber of Commerce members to participate in and is something El-Darahali says everyone can benefit from. “This software allows you to digitally engage with your customers, expand your customer base, enjoy cost savings and growth. It saves time, digitizes your process and ensures fewer in-person interactions other than the service itself. This could potentially protect a good number of people,” he says. El-Darahali says digitization ensures businesses can continue to operate, while also guaranteeing better customer retention through the deployment of safe and secure procedures. This, he says, also helps the economy. “This system gives me, the customer, trust in the fact that this business has taken all possible measures to protect me, which makes me, as a client, more comfortable than shopping somewhere that doesn’t have a digital checkin,” he says. DIGITIZATION HELPS BUSINESSES AND PROVINCE GROW
This program is among the many digital support services the Halifax Chamber of Commerce has identified and connected its members to, CONTINUED ON D2
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