A World of Innovation

By Anna Guy

Regardless of size, employing the right platform for the proper service is a fine balance; Embracing new tools can elevate the services companies provide exponentially, but understanding which tool, and how to use them, is a major challenge.

Companies such as Air Canada have relied on NOVIPRO to bring them past the finish line with new technological innovation. With 25 years of expertise under its belt, NOVIPRO has quietly earned its reputation as a bona fide partner for companies that want to keep at the forefront of their respective industries. With a speciality in business transformation through IT, NOVIPRO provides customers with a wide range of business solutions, including professional services, ERP, software, infrastructure solutions, big data, analytics, and Cloud computing business platforms.

With industry changing quickly, businesses know they must innovate to stay competitive and profitable. The experts at NOVIPRO speak their customer’s language, and understand their objectives to recommend the most reliable, concrete solutions for their business.

EVOLUTION of NOVIPRO
Evolution and transformation are not easy to navigate. Large ships do not change course quickly. A thorough understanding of both the goals and objectives of the company, and how and which technology can support those goals and objectives, is the only way to the top.

NOVIPRO has incredible credentials backing it up: It’s one of IBM’s longest standing independent partners, and the recipient of the Best IBM Partner for the Canadian Market for 2018. But perhaps its best accolade is its own longevity—NOVIPRO is an example of a business that has transformed and evolved as the markets did.

“So many large companies come up strongly and disappeared quickly,” notes Yves Paquette, CEO. “The fact that we are helping companies transform and evolve, and can prove to them that we have done it ourselves, builds a trust.”

There have been three major phases in NOVIPRO’s own evolution. When NOVIPRO started in 1993, it did so as a project management team. Then Microsoft came along, becoming the dominant PC-based project management software, and “we had to reinvent,” says Paquette. This move precipitated NOVIPRO’s enduring relationship with IBM, which started in 1998.

“After that, we almost reinvented the wheel in terms of IBM partnerships by placing ourselves between the customer and the manufacturer,” says Paquette. “In fact, we are one of the only IBM partners in Canada who didn’t work at IBM.”

NOVIPRO started to sell mainframes, with its first sale going to Sherbrooke University. That first major sale snowballed into one account after another. “The customer enjoyed the fact that there was a team in place between them and the manufacturer, and benefitted from an agnostic attitude around different platforms,” says Paquette. In 2006, anticipating that price dropping of equipment would pose challenges, NOVIPRO then pivoted to its Business Solutions division, offering custom business solutions for companies of all types.

“This was a great opportunity to reinvent ourselves and learn how to sell business solutions,” says Paquette. “It forced us to learn a completely different set of skills, to talk to different people, to take different approaches.”

Cloud Business Platform
“The Evolution of the market made us start to think about starting to invest into the Cloud,” says Paquette. “We formed NOVICloud as a way to force us to learn that technology—if we still want to be the specialist to help costumers evolve and select the right platform, we need to possess and understand the technology inside and out. And in 2015, we decided to create a cloud computing division, called E-SPACE. With the Cloud Business platform of NOVIPRO, we can offer the asset of a Cloud computing strategy to every company while making sure they are on the right platform and for most, that they understand the use of the Cloud.”

“Medium and large businesses do not necessarily have the skill to embrace new technology for each new project to generate the ROI,” continues Paquette. “AI is a good example of this. We know it is important. AI is a great tool to analyse data and make predictions, but there is so much to be done before getting to that. For instance, gaining good inventory of all your data, and understanding governance rules, and more.”

According to the third annual IT Portrait of Canadian Businesses Survey conducted by NOVIPRO last February, AI adoption is on the rise amongst mid to large-sized companies with more than one-third (34 per cent) of businesses planning to invest in Artificial Intelligence within the next two years. This represents an increase of 48 per cent compared to 2017.

As new businesses seek to align applications and IT infrastructure with their business goals, expert guidance is paramount and NOVIPRO has a track record of helping their customers capitalize on the latest developments in the field. “Our business solutions, which means software with services around it, combined with our expertise around the infrastructure, means that your business will run smoothly to reach clients’ expectations,” says Paquette. “There are so many people and companies selling solutions, but without this strong expertise, you can run into many problems. We combine expertise and solutions and that way our business solutions arm is stronger.”

https://hub.novipro.com/en/2019-it-portrait-of-canadian-middle-and-large-sized-companies
www.novipro.com/en