Yvonne Tollens
Yvonne Tollens, President
Company: ComputerAid Professional
Services Ltd., Okotoks, Alberta
Contact Info: Tel: (403) 938-3020, e-mail: tollensy@computeraidpro.com
Description: A leading agricultural software company, ComputerAid provides relevant and easy-to-use software that allows cattle ranchers to make faster, better business and animal care decisions and to improve productivity. Information can be gathered on individual animals or groups, without any duplicate data. Cattle operations can use the software to manage input costs, track cattle and commodity inventory, export easier and make more profitable business decisions.
Background: Raised the seventh of eight children on a cattle ranch, Yvonne credits a familial line of innovators for creating her passion to use technology in a traditionally non-technology based industry. “My great grandfather was forward-thinking. When he arrived in Canada during the gold rush, he realized that he’d do better feeding the miners than panning for gold.” And her grandfather was given an honourary degree in agriculture for his innovation with environmental care by introducing new technology in agriculture in his generation. In addition, Yvonne’s father received the Order of Canada for his work in applying new and innovative practices to agriculture. “I’ve had wonderful examples throughout my whole life of people asking themselves ‘How can we make this better?’ So, it was a natural extension to get into the business.” With her knowledge about agriculture and a background in marketing, coupled with her husband Ralph’s technology background, the pair launched ComputerAid in 1986 and haven’t looked back.
Unique Aspect: ComputerAid’s products provide a level of timely and historical detail that was not available in existing software. With its software, employees at every level of a cattle ranch now have the information to make immediate decisions.
Award: 2006 RBC Canadian Woman Entrepreneur Award – Innovation. “For me personally, the award created the opportunity to meet some very fine people who have created successful businesses using a management style similar to my own. The whole process also allowed our team to pause, look at what we’ve accomplished and celebrate.”
Biggest Success Factor: Having created an environment conducive to innovation, Yvonne and her team are committed to solving the unsolved, and to looking at new ideas. “What we’re really good at is not only understanding technology, but making it work in the field. It’s our commitment to going that extra quarter mile that sets our company apart.” Yvonne believes that the continual process of innovation is important in order to succeed in the global marketplace.
Competitive Edge: “Our absolute commitment to our clients. We spend a significant portion of our gross sales every year on improving, expanding or bringing new ideas to our customers. We continually invest not only in new technologies, but in new solutions.”
Greatest Challenge: “What we do has never been done before, so there’s no one to copy or follow. That presents opportunities as well as challenges, which is why we are innovative – we have to be good at figuring things out.”
Lesson Learned: “It’s better to make adjustments in business as you go along rather than over planning to try to make things perfect. Once you get out there, everything is different anyway.”
Biggest Rewards: Money is a motivator but not what gets Yvonne excited. “Money is a barometer because, if people are willing to pay for something, it means it’s important to them. And when you’re working with technology and coming up with the type of solutions that we offer, it’s vital to pay attention to what the customer really wants. What motivates our entire team is taking something that is just an idea or a theoretical thought or problem, and overcoming that problem. When you take people places that they’ve never been able to go to before, that’s rewarding.”
How RBC Royal Bank Helps: RBC has been Yvonne’s bank of choice for 10 years. She is particularly impressed with the way RBC worked with her clients to help them through the BSE (“Mad Cow”) crisis in May 2003. “You can tell the quality of bank when things get difficult. RBC has very solid, well thought out reporting standards for their clients and, during the BSE crisis, those reporting requirements did not change. Other banks immediately changed their requirements, adding to the stress of an incredible crisis for some of our clients. That cost came at the worst of times.”
ComputerAid was also at the ready to assist during the crisis. All animals had to be inspected, so the company immediately created tools for that. Subsequently, it created software that connects right into the Canadian identification agency database that allows farmers to confirm information such as animal birth dates and locations, and whether they qualify for a particular market. “It was a problem requiring an immediate solution, which we were able to provide.”
Growth Advice: “There are milestones that every business operator is going to deal with – from hiring your first employee to obtaining office space through to making long-term business commitments – and you’re generally making those commitments before you necessarily know whether you can finance them. The movement through those processes requires a willingness to take risk and go ahead, even when you don’t know all the answers.”
Future Plans: “We’re a 100% technology business, so showing people how they can use their knowledge and leverage that into a global market is where I see a lot of our future as a company.” ComputerAid has also developed software to evaluate the investment opportunities in the cattle industry. “Because we invest in cattle ourselves, we wanted tools to track performance and profitability in order to make informed investment decisions, and we found that other people had the same need.” ComputerAid’s new Cattle Investment Software is now available.
Personal Interests: Yvonne and her husband try to do something new every year that they’ve never done before, such as motorcycle riding, fly fishing, or travel. “You always need to move a little bit outside your comfort zone because it expands the way you think. In our case, it helps us understand what our clients go through when trying to learn something new.” Yvonne has also taken leadership roles in industry organizations including the International Livestock Congress-Calgary. Her strong sense of community resulted in the Cattlemen’s Chautauqua, a fundraising event for local hospitals and schools that celebrates the surrounding agriculture community.
|
