Applying digital co-ordinates to lease roads in Alberta’s oil patch puts GEOTrac on the map

Mapping Growth in the Patch

Mar 1, 2011  

by Steve MacLeod

Photo by Bookstrucker

DRIVING INNOVATION: Tim Hodge with one of GEOTrac’s newest products, the Road Pilot

Alberta Venture is pleased to kick off a series profiling the success of companies ranked in the Fast Growth 50

Crowdsourcing is usually connected with gimmicks like inviting consumers to name the newest flavour of Doritos or having hockey fans from across Canada compete to come up with a new theme song for Hockey Night in Canada.

As GEOTrac International has proven, of crowdsourcing can be effective outside pop culture, too. “We’re the original crowdsourcing map,” notes Tim Hodge, CEO of the Calgary-based company.

Back in 2003, GEOTrac was launched as a geographic information system company, providing digital mapping solutions to Alberta’s oil and gas industry. Digital maps were starting to hit their stride in urban centres. Vehicles in the oil patch, however, were still relying on binders full of photocopied maps to try to navigate the infrastructure of the province’s burgeoning oil and gas sector.

To fill the void in the market, GEOTrac had data loggers placed on the trucks building the private lease roads criss-crossing the province’s rural landscape. Every day, GPS co-ordinates from the trucks were uploaded and fed to a proprietary mapping application.

“We started on mapping because they couldn’t rely on Google or Bing, so we started tracking our own lease map, which is critical to our success,” says Kevin MacDonald, vice-president of marketing and communications with GEOTrac.

In just four years annual sales topped $3 million, and in 2010 annual sales nearly doubled to $6 million. That growth was good for 30th spot on Alberta Venture’s Fast Growth 50 list for 2011.

Hodge and MacDonald are both quick to point out that one of the main reasons for the company’s growth has been focusing on a single industry.

“We can’t be all things to all people,” explains Hodge.

“You see all these gadgets that will fry an egg and make your bacon, but the stuff that goes into our market, you have to tone it down,” he adds. “They want longevity and productivity.”

As the old adage goes, “putting all your eggs in one basket” might seem like a risky strategy. As the price of oil dropped and drilling projects got shelved a few years back, it may have seemed even riskier. But despite the economic woes, GEOTrac continued to grow.

“There was a little bit of a technology shift in oil and gas,” notes Hodge. “When there’s a slowdown, they catch up. They catch up on process, on safety and on automation.”

By that point, GEOTrac wasn’t the only digital mapping option in the oil patch, but the company was prepared to take the lead.

With roughly half of its 25 employees scattered around Alberta, daily interaction with customers out in the field put GEOTrac in a unique position to know exactly what operators in the oil patch wanted in a digital mapping solution.

“All of the suggestions are tagged, logged and reviewed. They are prioritized on the number of requests and customer value,” says Hodge. Luckily for GEOTrac, its customers are not shy, adds MacDonald.

Having information is one thing. Using that information is another, and that’s an aspect of GEOTrac’s business that has also contributed to its growth.

In each of the past three years, GEOTrac has pumped more than $1 million into research and development. The choice to put more than 20 per cent of revenue every year into R&D is a strategy designed to ensure its suite of products continues to evolve.

As far as total spending goes, that’s good for fourth among the companies on the Fast Growth 50.

As well as company money, GEOTrac has augmented its research funding with government assistance, receiving credits though the federal government’s Scientific Research and Experimental Development Tax Incentive Program.

Although haggling for government dollars is no easy exercise – Hodge notes maybe one in five applications work out – the effort is worth it.
“The funding is necessary to get some of this to market,” notes MacDonald.

Sometimes, government assistance comes in unexpected ways. For GEOTrac, it was Alberta’s Working Alone regulation. Essentially, employees who spend time working alone must have effective ways of communicating with others in case there is an injury or emergency.

“It used to be, ‘Here’s a cellphone, call us if you need us,’” says MacDonald. “Now the onus is on the company, not the worker.”

GEOTrac’s solution was simply to automate the process through tracking products. As the competition in digital mapping grew, Hodge says, being prepared to bundle it with tracking and automatic vehicle location solutions kept GEOTrac ahead of the competition.

“We had the base product and had to step it up a few levels. We had to build in two or three levels of redundancies,” says Hodge.

Even with keeping its focus on one industry, GEOTrac still sees potential for growth. As well as continuing to enhance its product offerings, the company hopes to expand its territory. Currently, about 80 per cent of its business is conducted in Alberta, so the company will look to capitalize on opportunities in the U.S. and overseas as it moves forward.

Keeping the customer’s needs at the forefront means the company won’t be doing it alone.

“We’ll have more partnerships for U.S. and international operations to provide detailed, localized support,” says Hodge.

One thing for sure is that as it expands, GEOTrac will continue to focus on just one industry.

“We’re myopic in our focus,” says MacDonald. “We won’t be tracking pizza in Toronto or sanders in Winnipeg.”

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