Marquis Cote, president, UniForge
Context and business issuesUniForge is a full marketing and advertising agency for the public sector, tourism and entertainment industries. It handles everything from strategy and brand to digital and print products. The company formed as a result of a merger between digitalOttawa, a consulting, project management and staffing firm, and The Other Side Studios, a web and graphic design, video production, mobile development and event management company. From its inception, Marquis Cote, founder of digitalOttawa, chose to run the whole business on cloud computing as the best means to ensure that all of the firm’s employees would be connected wherever they were.
The cloud solutionFreshbooks, a Toronto-based cloud computing service, handles UniForge’s invoicing and employee time tracking needs. Cote’s firm has been with Freshbooks since 2008. UniForge also uses Google applications such as Docs, Gmail, and Chat so that Cote, his graphic designer, his programmer and project manager can communicate with one another. Dropbox, the file storage website, allows UniForge employees to easily share important data.
Implementation of all of these technologies was nearly effortless, says Cote. Installation required just a click of a button so Cote was able to put cloud computing technology to use almost immediately. He did not encounter any challenges during implementation, and joked that the only obstacle is parting with the money to pay service fees. While employees quickly embraced cloud computing, Cote discovered he needed to implement internal processes that would make using this technology more effective, and would ensure that everyone was using cloud applications in the same way. Before implementing Freshbooks’ product, Cote’s company lacked an easy-to-use process to create invoices and track employees’ time.
