Hi Sarah,
Thanks for the brief chat after the screening of “Sustainable Me” last night at the Metro Theatre; a perfect venue for that topic!
As we briefly spoke about and you asked me to email you on:
We are a software company here in Edmonton. We’re doing business almost everywhere except Alberta (with several exceptions) – Latin America, USA, Europe. We have a foundational platform that we’ve built over the last 4 years (called DECK DecisionWare) which is a Business Management Platform. It’s claim to fame is that it provides “actionable analytics”: the combination of 3 large engine’s inside of it – Analytics, Business Process (or Workflow) and Policy (Rules) allow our product to notify users of important situations that are emerging (based on the data entering our customer’s data sets) – which is different from the plethora of analytics tools available today which require a user to notice situations emerging and take action on them (opening up all manner of human error).
When we spoke with Susan Anderson (ADM of Alberta Health) in 2014 about what we were doing, she urged us to set up a meeting with CGI (who holds the Master Services Agreement) and partner with them. Instead of being productive and valuable, the meeting with CGI had undertones of protectionism and defensiveness. They worked hard to land that contract – can you blame them for being defensive?
The way that AHS specifically, and the GoA in general does business shuts out small local companies with good ideas and great products from landing their first big referencable customer. If the GoA is truly wanting to redirect the Alberta economy away from natural resources, it MUST adopt an attitude of “try first, buy first” with local Alberta businesses. Only then will local businesses have an opportunity to grow – meaning add employees as their sales grow based on customers who can be referenced.
Here at Spieker Point, we know what we’re good at, and we know what we suck at. By forcing a niche company like Spieker Point to grow into something that it is not – say, to compete with CGI for the Master Services Agreement – the GoA and AHS is killing the startup/entrepreneur mentality.
While it is very expensive and time consuming for us to open up foreign markets, this has been a necessity as we’d be out of business trying to do business in our own back yard. The “thinking local” movement is wonderful at a micro level – consumers going to farmers markets and meeting their neighbours on a Saturday.
The important question is: can Alberta be held up as a shining example of how, on a macro level, a province can incubate startups to climb out of it’s dependence on natural resources using an attitude of “Living Local”?
Now is the time to try.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Greg
—
Greg Campbell
President & CEO
Spieker Point Inc.
I think there is a misunderstanding regarding my intent of the original conversation with Sarah Hoffman, and the reason for making the letter open. I’d like to address that here.
My intent wasn’t to use this chance meeting (and an invitation to tell her more) as a vehicle with the Minister of Health to get special treatment for my company. I believe THAT would have been a “cheap stunt” (to use Mr. Pederson’s words from Facebook).
My intent was and is to point out the discrepancy between how the GoA has been talking and acting for a long time now. If my letter had remained private, a greater understanding of the problem and a potential simple solution would not have been in the minds and conversations of a few more Albertans than it is today.
Further, the current government isn’t the first who have talked of weaning Alberta off of natural resources, and that’s the reason this discussion needs to stay non-partisan.
Sadly, this issue is not of the politicians (or their respective political parties). It is of the bureaucracy and its rigid and difficult procurement processes (and lack of ingenuity). It is the bureaucrats that look for the path of least resistance resulting in a less competitive and diversified economy.
Where is the digital transformation office in Alberta? Does the GoA have one? How can it engage local expertise and stimulate economic diversification through technology?