Technology

When Garry Van Soest wants to clear his head, he walks the picturesque trails in Kalamalka Provincial Park. It’s a few minutes’ drive from the Vernon offices of AVS Systems, which he co-founded in 2007. As a career entrepreneur with more than 30 years of experience (he’s started up and exited nine tech companies in that time), Van Soest understands the need to keep his mind fresh in order to solve problems and stay innovative. He freely admits that operating a financing software company like AVS in a quiet town like Vernon goes against conventional wisdom.

From a strategic standpoint, his company would probably be better situated in a major economic centre like Toronto. That way, it would be right next door to all of the major financial institutions that use his company’s software. It would also make AVS Systems more visible amongst its competitors. Van Soest, 51 and a father of three ski-crazy children, has been there, and done that. As logical as that line of thinking might seem, he’ll happily take the laid-back surroundings of the North Okanagan. For him, it’s more about achieving work-life balance.

“Silicon Valley works because they feed off one another, but it’s so busy and so intense that it just eats you up,” says Van Soest, who maintains a direct presence in Toronto where the president of AVS maintains a sales office. “We’re healthy. There’s a bit of tradeoff where every entrepreneur has to have enough time to be creative. To be creative inside the walls of your office is a challenge.”

Van Soest has also heard the argument for situating a company where there’s an abundance of available skilled workers. Until recently, the Okanagan wasn’t exactly recognized as a technology hotbed. To operate a company like AVS Systems—one that creates, publishes and supports software for leading financial institutions and other credit-issuing organizations—it requires employees with special skill-sets.

He points to UBC Okanagan’s burgeoning computer science program, noting that AVS Systems has hired two graduates from it in the last 18 months alone. There’s also a new generation of tech talent being pumped out of Okanagan College’s Centre of Excellence where AVS recently hired another employee. “Our talent pool has grown with UBCO’s success. That’s very important to us,” says Van Soest, who works with a team of 20 in Vernon. “The colleges are doing better. They’re finding better instructors.”

Of course, sourcing talent from further afield isn’t overly onerous, adds Van Soest. The Okanagan Valley, with its charm and extensive lifestyle opportunities, makes it an easy sell to prospective job candidates with the right outlook. “It’s quite easy to import talent. You have to find people who think way outside the box and believe in an hour of solace a day in Kal Park: it’s one of the greatest places on the planet.”

Being located in a remote area also helped AVS Systems in an unexpected way. It allowed Van Soest to operate under the radar, so that when it came time to launch the new software, it took the market by storm. “We developed our software solutions under a bit of a cloak,” he says. “When we designed our solutions, we blindsided the market and we set a new standard rapidly adopted by all financial institutions.

At its core, the software AVS Systems produces helps financing institutions streamline many data-intense functions. Before Van Soest’s team came along, most of the processes were paper-oriented and laborious. “We were disruptive in that innovation, and it changed the way vendors assessed risk,” he says. “We brought a lot of efficiencies to the industry. We brought a lot of credibility and auditing tools. We brought a lot of quality that wasn’t there before.”

Van Soest relocated to Vernon from Victoria in 1996, after selling one of his tech companies in the provincial capital. An outdoorsman at heart, he enjoys many of the activities the area offers: ski racing, mountain biking, motocross and competitive water skiing, to name a few. He’s also a director of the Vernon Ski Club, where his children are active participants. “It was realistically to live the dream. I wanted to raise a family and have work more integrated with my lifestyle,” says Van Soest, of coming to the Okanagan. “It’s an amazing place to be, for sure. I’ve lived in a lot of places. It’s close to an airport and it’s a good central location for recreation.”

For more information visit: AVS Systems

There have been points in the history of Protocol Technologies Inc. when the founders looked across Highway 97—south to Kelowna, and northwest to Kamloops—and considered moving shop. And yet for every move in search of more space, and there have been four moves since the company opened in 1993, Protocol knew Vernon would remain home. “The difference was, in Vernon, people want that connection, they want a person they can trust and who is accountable to them, who can’t just disappear,” says Todd Hanna, CEO and co-founder. “Kamloops is another market that’s fantastic for us. They like the old school way of doing things. A handshake is a handshake.”

When Protocol opened in 1993, it was the first Vernon company to focus exclusively on business IT services. Today it’s renowned for helping organizations in the Okanagan and beyond make technology more accessible, secure and effective. As a local business in the Thompson Okanagan and as the ‘small town’ provider to big city organizations, Hanna says Protocol’s chosen location has forced the company to focus on stellar service. “We can’t afford to lose customers, so our level of service has to be higher. You’re used to being accountable and doing what you say you’re going to do to keep your reputation.”

For larger clients (Protocol’s largest, at the enterprise level, is in the US), Hanna says, “It’s not about location. It’s about attitude. If it’s broken, we can fix it. And the bigger component is we can put that technology to work. We’re pretty renowned for being able to go into a business and identify solutions and opportunities with technology they may not have thought of.”

Working across regions and industries, from manufacturing and medical offices to hospitality and professional firms, has also given Protocol its agility. The company is adept at working with multiple platforms and vendors. “We’ve become a lot more well-rounded for it,” says Hanna, adding his team is also able to apply the solutions that work for one sector to others."

When Protocol started out, he recalls clients laughing when they were asked about their IT budget. Now they recognize technology as a vital part of the way they collect, store and leverage data to remain profitable. For many of clients, which often have between 10 and 250 staff, Protocol is their IT department. Hannah jokes about his team having a bit more gray hair than people are used to seeing in IT, but it’s his tenured employees’ experience that allows Protocol to gain that kind of trust with clients. “They’re past business owners and senior managers. They can directly relate to our customers because they’ve got that background, and you draw on everyone’s experience,” says Hanna, who has turned recruitment challenges into an opportunity.

More than  half of Protocol’s more than 20 staff is from the Okanagan; the rest have been brought in from cities such as Vancouver and Calgary. Hanna says when he has to sell Vernon, the headlines are always lifestyle, a slower pace and family. “You find time in the day to get out and enjoy Vernon. Everything is here. We have walking meetings in the park,” says Hanna.

In 2011, Protocol moved into its new building on Polson Drive, just off Kalamalka Lake Road and footsteps from the paths of Polson Park. For Protocol, Vernon’s turned out to be a good place to do business. “It’s still a somewhat small-town environment where you work with somebody and then you see them on the street, and you see how your work is impacting their business. Or you speak with someone else and they’ve already heard of you. The smallness of the market can be quite rewarding.”

He and his peers believe Vernon will and should continue to grow its tech community. “It’s a clean industry, and if there are technology jobs, that means opportunities for young people.”

For more information visit Protocol Technologies

If he stood out on his studio balcony overlooking the bustling Highway 6 and the thicket of aspen shrubs bordering Polson Park, and craned his neck as far as it would go (and cameramen tend to have strong necks), there’s a chance Trevor Honigman could see the glass windows of Kal Tire, the company that gave Beacon Studios Inc. its start.

“I owe a lot to Kal Tire, to Tom Foord and his family and the people who were driving marketing & communications there at the time,” says Honigman. He’s talking of the first years following 2001, when Honigman, a former video journalist, struck out on his own and formed Beacon Studios Inc., a corporate video production company with big vision.

Many of the videos Beacon made for Kal Tire helped train the company’s team members across Canada and abroad. Where before the international organization with a Vernon home base would have had training personnel visiting sites in person, now video could do the heavy lifting—in a way that was uniquely consistent and cost-effective.

“Whenever you’re spread out across a large geographical area, video is one way to deliver a consistent message and get a great return on investment in time and personnel.”

Honigman, who grew up on Gabriola Island and moved to Vernon in 1989, didn’t have to look far or wait long for opportunities to help other businesses expand their reach through video.

A local industrial manufacturer, Timberstar Manufacturing, used Beacon Studios to present its technology to customers worldwide. When they expanded and started Timberstar Tractor, a Kioti tractor dealership, they came to Beacon Studios to build an online library of social media videos and commercials. A Lower Mainland computer chip company, Teradici, hired Beacon to explain to clients through video how it could securely access remote computers through PCOIP technology.

Another innovative local company, Seaplanes West, multiplied their annual sales when Beacon created videos to illustrate their process and advantages, both to the old-school pilots as well as the next generation of tech-savvy aviation enthusiasts.

Those videos often perform Beacon’s best marketing, with viewers as customers or competitors later calling on Beacon to design, develop and shoot videos for them, which is how Beacon has landed production gigs as far away as eastern Canada, California and South America.

And yet, says Honigman, “Beacon Studios wouldn’t be what it is if it weren’t in Vernon… because we started here and by necessity had to work with such a variety of industries. That really gave us such vast experience and perspective to draw from.  Now, we’ve grown to the point where people worldwide are noticing what we produce here, and they’re interested.”

Where companies and organizations once hired Beacon to produce a few longer sales videos, for example, they now come for numerous short videos carefully designed to work together in a long-term campaign, distributed through their very own YouTube channel.  The results have been remarkable.

Beacon Studios Inc., now a full-scale ‘multi-media’ producer, works with a handful of remote partners to fulfill the entire strategic and creative life cycle of its projects, from understanding brand personas and production, to distribution and promotion through social media.

Thanks to growing digital technology—its accessibility and affordability—and a growing local tech community, Beacon Studios is very successful in partnering with Vernon talent such as audio specialists, animators and video drone operators to offer entrepreneurs the next generation in video services. Realtors, for example, can now market properties with videos illustrating aerial views, showing a pool where there currently isn’t one, future phases of large property developments, or apple trees in bloom in August when it’s, in fact, February. “Affordably creating those visual tools no longer requires Star Wars budgets,” says Honigman, who believes technology and the atmosphere of collaboration are going to benefit everyone here.

“It’s definitely on the rise. All of the sudden, more people want to work together, which is great news for us, and our clients.”

For more information visit: Beacon Studios