Five Growth Strategies That Worked For Arte Roofing & Construction, Lift Interactive, 3esi, Tantus Solutions and Pure Technologies

3. Saving Customers Money

Rotten time to be serving the oil and gas industry, right? Not if you’re 3es innovation inc., a software developer founded in 2005 by alumni of Hyprotech Ltd., which was bought by American competitor Aspen Technology Inc. in a controversial deal three years earlier. 3esi managed to triple its sales last year – you know, the year commodity prices tanked – by offering exploration and production companies an all-in-one software tool, esi.manage, that increases their capital efficiency and optimizes their working processes, ultimately lowering their costs of doing business.

“The software is about improving planning and budgeting. You can run different price and cost scenarios,” explains chief operating officer Salvador Clave. Surprisingly, there are no direct competitors in this space; new clients typically upgrade to esi.manage from basic Microsoft Excel or their own customized package after finding the costs of internal IT development and maintenance too high.

Not just local mid-market players like Enerplus Income Fund and Murphy Oil Canada but also international giants such as Delphi Energy Corp. and Italy’s Eni SPA have adopted the system. That still leaves a huge customer base for 3esi to conquer; corporate services manager Eileen Puczko estimates the IT market in oil and gas to be worth US$500 billion.

4. Levering The Big Contract

Information technology consulting firm Tantus Solutions Group Inc., which early on identified its focus as law and order, landed whopper accounts in each of 2006, 2007 and 2008 from the provincial solicitor general’s office and Edmonton Police Services. That helps explain how the company was able to double its revenues over the last three years, but it also exposed the company to the whims of government decision-making. Fortunately, the wins led to opportunities in international policing services and speaking engagements across North America. And now Tantus is investing in a private-sector marketing and sales strategy designed to attract a new clientele to complement its government business.

“We’re rebranding and changing the focus of the company on the services we provide,” president and CEO Jeff Young says. One of those services is procurement of hardware and software, which the company is already doing for the solicitor general as part of the construction of a new remand centre in Edmonton. “We’re broadening our services around procurement as a consulting solution that we provide,” Young says. “So we’re leveraging a lot of the work that we’re doing to expand the services and then rebrand the work that Tantus does as a result.”

5. Creating Can’t-Touch-This Technology

The state of aging infrastructure is a concern around the world. Until recently, the chief way to prevent a bridge collapse or pipeline leak was to simply keep track of the age of a structure and physically inspect it. Very often, by the time you knew you had a leak on your hands, you already had a big mess to clean up.

Calgary’s Pure Technologies Ltd. has a better idea. Founded by former real estate developers Peter and Jamie Paulson in 1995, the company has devised systems that detect flaws before something bad happens, and do so while the infrastructure is in use. Its SoundPrint acoustic monitoring systems can detect metal corrosion in cable-stay bridges and buildings. It has optical fibre-based systems for monitoring water networks. It recently commercialized a free-swimming “SmartBall” that locates tiny leaks in water, wastewater and energy pipelines.

Pure’s pairing of hardware and software with consulting services capable of deploying them is now turning the corner from early-stage technology and market development to takeoff mode. It has a contract to manage Washington, D.C.’s water system. Its fastest-growing market is the Middle East and North Africa, where water is often produced in costly desalination plants. It has licensed its technology to partners in the United Kingdom, Spain and South Africa.

And with all of Pure’s systems patented or patent pending, this world is its oyster. Though there are competing technologies out there, SmartBall is the only free-swimming device capable of monitoring as well as detecting leaks, for example. The main challenge, says chief financial officer Karen Keebler, is getting municipalities typically starved for cash to invest in systems that will pay for themselves in the long term. Fortunately for Pure, it has the growing scarcity and value of water on its side. “In North America until recently, losing water was not a big issue,” Keebler says. “Now it’s more of a commodity. And on the wastewater side, there are more regulations in place.”

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