While an uncertain economy is likely to impede the overall growth of Canadian small businesses over the 12–18 months, firms that adapt quickly and creatively to market changes will survive – and even thrive – through these tough times, a Canadian expert says.

"It's a time when the weaker businesses will dissolve, while strong [firms] could become even stronger," said Ricky Mak, an IDC Canada analyst who covers the small and mid-sized enterprise (SME) market.

That's a view shared by Conrad Mandala, vice-president, SME Channels, SAP Canada, who suggests that smart technology choices help distinguish the "strong" firms from those that don't quite make it.

In tough economic times, the right technology choices can help small companies, not just to compete effectively, but also grow, he says.
This is especially so when a small business changes its focus, or the nature and scope of its operations in response to shifting marketing conditions.

It was such smart choices that enabled Calgary-based Datalog Technology Inc. to successfully implement and benefit from a significant business transformation.

Datalog, which provides drilling and geological monitoring products and services to the oil and gas industry, has offices and agents around the world.   

The company changed focus last year from well-logging and mud-logging to geophysical wireline logging – an operation that it believed offered greater growth potential.

Wireline Logging involves measuring and recording the physical properties of formations by introducing sensors in a borehole via a "wireline" – an electromechanical cable. These measurements help identify the location of resources such as oil, gas, coal or other minerals.  

Since 2005, Datalog had been managing its business operations using SAP Business One, a suite of applications that targets the requirements of small or mid-sized businesses – from Walldorf, Germany based SAP AG.

SAP Business One includes 14 modules to manage functions such as: administration, financials, sales opportunities, purchasing, banking, inventory and purchasing.

When Datalog shifted its focus to wireline logging last year, it needed to consolidate and centralize key operations.

For instance, the company had to standardize several geographically dispersed offices on a single accounting system. It also needed to ensure compliance with country-specific accounting regulations and multiple currencies.

"We are a fairly small company doing business internationally, so our challenges [included] communications, timely reporting, and information transmission from an IT perspective," said Erin Shackleton, corporate controller at Datalog.  

SAP Business One, she said, helped the company squarely address these challenges. 

For instance, with transactions involving multiple countries, Business One enabled conversion between currencies and languages, greatly reducing the time and effort to accomplish these tasks.

On the financial side, Shackleton said, Business One has simplified tasks such as invoicing and tracking of time and personnel in the field.

Moving forward, Datalog will implement additional features of the application, including Web-based time sheets.

This will be helpful given that many Datalog employees don't necessarily work from the office, but are out in the field, Shackleton said.  

When the new reporting system is in place, employees will be able to log on to an online application and fill out their time sheet. It would then be forwarded to their managers for approval, and finally to Shackleton – and then feed in directly into the payroll software.

"This would reduce the amount of physical handling of time-sheets and keep it all centralized and more practical."