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18 - The Oakville Beaver, Friday May 4, 2007 www.oakvillebeaver.com Business Oakville Beaver · FRIDAY, MAY 4, 2007 Oakville man invents hi-tech assistant By David Lea OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF A new technology, developed in the basement by an Oakville man, is revolutionizing the way people are doing business. Ian Campbell, a Partner at Ximetrix Systems, is the inventor of Mindit Assist, a new software that assumes many of the duties of a personal assistant. "The world's most efficient thing ever developed in business is the assistant. As an employee you can't ask for a more productive, time saving resource than an assistant," said Campbell. In an era of stretched budgets and downsizing most companies cannot give each employee a real assistant so that's where Campbell's invention comes in. Designed primarily for travelling sales representatives Mindit Assist works to complete the day-to-day paper work many people just don't have time for. For example, a sales representative receives a call from a customer requesting a price quote on some merchandise. On an e-mail enabled device, like a Blackberry, the representative types a few lines of text outlining what they want the virtual assistant to accomplish and to whom the information is to be sent. The representative then sends the request to their Mindit Assist-equipped computup.' They recognized right away what the potential for this was," said Campbell. Now available at any Rogers store for $20 a month Mindit Assist was developed by Campbell, in his spare time, after recognizing a need in his own company. "We had guys on the road who needed to sell things and needed to generate quotes," said Campbell. "The cost of hiring a secretary was not in the picture so the software was written to address that need." After toiling away in his basement writing the software over a two-year period Campbell introduced his invention to his company where it was soon noticed by their customers. "They were out showing people and people would ask for a quote so our guys would pull out their Blackberries and type a few lines of text and hit send. A couple minutes later the customer's Blackberry would ring and there was the quote. Everybody kept going, `How do you find people who can work that fast?'" said Campbell. "So, a lot of people started saying to us that this was something that was needed in the industry." With nothing, but a real assistant, to compare his product to Campbell admits the road to marketing Mindit Assist has been a difficult one. "People go two ways. Either they say, `I want to hear more,' or they say, `I don't believe you can do what you say you can do,'" he said. Luckily, with skepticism giving way to intrigue the future is looking incredibly bright for Campbell and his company. "Real estate agents are another market that we're looking into. In fact, I can't say who, but we're working with one of the major real estate companies in North America to roll this out to their agents," said Campbell. In May Mindit Assist is poised to become even bigger with Campbell's one-year exclusivity deal with Rogers coming to an end. "There's some U.S. carriers that we're talking to. That's certainly a market. There's Europe, I was talking to a guy in Barcelona yesterday." The invention has changed the very fabric of Campbell's company, switching its focus from representing software manufacturers to software development. Campbell says he does have some new ideas on the drawing board, but for the moment they are top secret. Having altered the way thousands, and soon possibly millions, of people do business Campbell says he's happy he could invent something useful. "I'm never going to invent a new medicine to save everyone from heart attacks or something, but from a business standpoint this is an important tool," he said. BARRIE ERSKINE / OAKVILLE BEAVER TAKING PART: Ian Campbell has developed new business technology called Mindit Assist. er back at the office, which creates a personalized, professional document for the customer on company letterhead and e-mails the customer the requested information. "The other aspect of this being like a real assistant is it will e-mail you back saying, `just to let you know it's been delivered to such and such. If there was a problem, like it couldn't find an item that you asked for, it would come back and say, `I can't process that,'" said Campbell. "Three times a day it will e-mail you saying here are the things I've done for you and here are the things that are pending. You can set up notifications so if you want to be notified that it's your daughter's birthday it will send you a notification of that." The speed at which the virtual assistant works, completing tasks in minutes, is another feature that has caused wireless companies, like Rogers, to take interest. "We did a demonstration for them (Rogers), their jaws kind of dropped and they said, `Right, let's sign you AMEC engineers work globally from home By David Lea OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF For five years Oakville engineers have been working on projects in places like Africa, Indonesia, and Russia without leaving town. This phenomenon is courtesy of distributed engineering and is being used by the engineering giant AMEC to deal with a shortage of skilled labourers in some of the regions where it is completing projects. "Through distributed engineering we have people in Halifax who work on projects in Africa. You have people in Oakville who are doing things in Alberta and you have people in Vancouver who work on projects in Australia," said Michael Jolliffe, Senior Vice President of Government Relations and Communications. In the past, national and international projects like these required AMEC to either hire people at the project location or move a team to the area. "Moving people is difficult because they don't want to move. There are wives, there's second incomes," said Robert Livet, Vice President of Operations Energy. "You can't actually get the people to where the job is so you bring the job to where the people are." This is accomplished through Convero, a real-time project management system that allows engineers around the world to collaborate from their respective computers. "Generally what we do is split the project into packages," said Livet. "You get a package for the design of the utilities, a package for the design of a substation, a package for the design of a conveyor system." This system has allowed Oakville engineers to contribute to the oil sands project in Alberta where their expertise is being combined with those of engineers from AMEC offices in Calgary and Vancouver. The AMEC office in Calgary did not have sufficient resources to hanWith 45,000 employees in offices in more than 40 countries, very few other industries have been able to pull off what AMEC has done. "You need to be a firm of a certain size to be able to do this," said Jolliffe. With many different AMEC offices around the country and around the world working on the same project extra care does need to be taken to make sure that all the pieces of the puzzle come together correctly. "You have to be more rigorous in project control and how you follow up. Keep on top of scheduling, all this is important," said Livet. Many of the projects the Oakville office is working on are in different time zones. "I try not to give my cell phone number out because they might call me at 2 a.m. and they're thinking that they're calling me at the office," said Jolliffe. Through careful planning, like arranged conference calls in the evening AMEC has ironed out potential problems. DAVID LEA / OAKVILLE BEAVER TAKING PART: Robert Livet (left) and Michael Jolliffe of AMEC stand beside a poster showing projects their company has been working on through the Distributed Engineers program. dle the $400 million project. "The reason it came about is that you don't have enough resources in one office so you have to find the resources," said Livet. Distributed engineering has also allowed Oakville engineers to contribute to the design of a gold mine being constructed on Baffin Island. For Livet there is no better place than Baffin Island to illustrate the advantages of distributed engineering over local hiring. "There's nobody there," he said.