We’ve all heard the legendary ‘garage founder’ stories about some of today’s biggest tech companies, like Apple.
But the founder story you may not know started in a basement that’s about an hour’s drive from Ottawa.
In 2007, in the small town of Plantagenet, an employee at a large telcom had just left his job and was preparing to test his entrepreneurial instincts by setting up shop in his basement.
It wasn’t long before more colleagues joined him and, together, these founders set to work to build PiiComm, a name chosen to reflect their dream of empowering organizations with the infinite possibilities of mobile communications (the Greek letter “π” + “comm”).
Shawn Winter, one of these founders, shares, “We knew that businesses were thrilled with what the advances in mobile technology could do for their company’s productivity, but we also knew that not long after they purchased and deployed their devices that the actual management – or ‘Day 2’ as we call it – was a real challenge.”
This is how Ottawa’s only managed mobility services company got its start.
“We had no visions of grandeur; we’re not splashy people. We just loved mobile technology and loved solving this pain point for our customers,” said Winter. “It’s been more than 16 years now, and we’re just as passionate as we were in those ‘basement days’.”
More recently, they’ve been funnelling this passion into an offering called ‘Device as a Service’ or DaaS for short.
What is DaaS?
The concept behind DaaS is simple, “Why buy when you can subscribe.”
Here’s how it works.
Businesses pay a monthly fee per device that covers all associated services, from staging and deployment, to repairs and lifecycle management, to ESG-compliance and secure decommissioning at end-of-life.
“The traditional model was purchasing your team’s mobile devices as a capital expense and managing them yourself,” said Winter.
DaaS lets businesses equip their employees with mobile technology required to work at their best, while avoiding a large capital expense.
PiiComm’s clients include a variety of organizations and businesses, from large transportation and logistics companies whose deskless workers need rugged devices like scanners and RFID to organizations whose knowledge workers are remote and use consumer-grade devices that require ongoing security oversight.
The process starts with a needs assessment, and then they match your team with the technology and services that will be the best fit.
The model allows a company to pay a monthly fee per device that covers all associated services – from staging and deployment, to repairs and lifecycle management, to ESG-compliant and secure decommissioning at end-of-life.
“We’re finding that many companies are looking to simplify and streamline their operations, but don’t know this option exists,” said Winter.
What are the benefits?
In an economy where cash is king, DaaS helps conserve capital.
Another critical savings is time and bandwidth – especially your IT team.
“We exist to keep the noise of managing mobile devices out of the way,” says Winter. “Then you can focus on your core business.”
While options for mobile devices continue to grow — along with an expanding list of applications — device management has become its own area of expertise, especially with the added risks of being hacked.
“Mobile devices are now big targets for mischief,” said Winter. “So our MDM technicians definitely stay busy.”
Overall — and this could be a result of PiiComm maintaining its small town roots — what this team prides themselves on the most is their commitment to serving their clients.
“We believe customer service is a lost art,” said Winter. “It’s why we’ve set ourselves up to step in and say, ‘We got this’.”
