Today we’d like to introduce you to James Canada.
Hi James, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I graduated from Purdue University with a degree in Industrial Engineering. My first job was as an engineer at the John Deere Plow & Planter Works in Moline Illinois. After a short time reviewing processes for manufacturing operations, I was ask to head up two cost reduction programs working with both union employees through their suggestion program and salaried employees through their employee involvement program. After pioneering the use of technology to track savings for these programs, I was promoted to John Deere’s World Headquarters to manage these programs for all the North American facilities. Savings exceeded $50M a year; it was my first experience establishing a strategic plan. From there, I joined American Airlines to help manage a similar program at their Tulsa Maintenance. I was then promoted to a Director position within AMR Consulting, traveling the world consulting on Strategic planning for some of the largest companies in the World.
Travel impacted my family, so we chose to move to St Louis in the late ’90s and continued my career in consulting with Stone Carlie Consulting, eventually becoming the Director of HR. My career leads me to Holleran Duitsman Architects as the COO/CFO, then on to Reuters, where I headed up Facilities for all of North and South America. This was my last position in the Corporate world. The higher you are in a large company the more vulnerable you become. Thus I decided to use my consulting skills until I could start a business of my own. Invest in myself for once so to speak. I felt the time was right to own my own business but I was not sure what just yet.
My Business Partners and I were working together at another Technology company here in town. The management team there lacked vision, customer focus and employee relationships which we believe are critical success factors. I felt we could do things better and decided to take a risk. One day I asked one of my eventual Partners if he ever thought about starting his own business? His reply was just about every day. I commented that he had the tech background and I had the everything else background so we should give this a try. Our third Partner came to my office and said that he had heard us talking about starting our own business and proclaimed that you are not leaving without me, I am going with you. So we orchestrated our departure in late 2009 and started our own business. I had done consulting on my own for a number of years and was looking for the right team with the right service to sustain customer loyalty. We are about to celebrate our 11th year in business and have grown rapidly with over 750 clients on paper and around 150 clients that we service monthly. I am still excited we chose the Technology Industry as the need in this area continues to grow and there is no limit on the type of needs there are in the future.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The road has not been smooth but we chose to not look back; failure was not an option. For every two steps forward, it seemed we took one step back. Then one step forward and two steps back; however, the overall trend was always upward. Many sleepless nights and we often joke about our 3:00 am wake-up calls where I can not go back to sleep until I resolve the issue in my mind and write it down. It takes lots of energy to grow an organization but if you are working on something that is your passion, it does not feel like work itself. This business and what I am doing is my passion. The following describes one of our struggles along the way and how we addressed it.
When we initially started our organization, we needed to outsource our Help Desk support operations that address client issues. We also outsourced our phone answering service to a company in Kansas City. We began to track customer satisfaction with our services and the results were very poor. The original company we used for Help Desk support was in Toronto, Canada. With satisfaction results being so poor we soon moved our support to a local company in St Louis while continuing to use the KC answering service. Our client satisfaction results did not improve and the response time for help was even worse. Thus, our greatest Business Challenge to date has been the operation on our Help Desk support and phone answering system.
Realizing that we needed to make improvements or lose our clients, we invested in hiring local employees to support our Help Desk and answering service. We hired eight new employees, investing in the St Louis area and trained them on our processes for addressing client needs. We then hired an Executive Assistant to answer our incoming calls and asked them to learn all about our clients, their special needs and even their dog and cat names in order to personalize our service. Customer satisfaction ratings began to rise, and we now receive numerous compliments on our services. In our latest survey, we scored a 99.6% satisfaction rating from our clients while doubling the number of issues we resolve in a given month and achieving our service level agreements.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Jim has spent over 30 years in the corporate world, developing a career that has spanned several major corporations, including John Deere, American Airlines, Reuters, Stone Carlie, an architectural firm and several consulting firms. He has held the titles of Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Vice President of Facilities for North and South America, Vice President of Client Services, Director of Reengineering & TQM, Director of Human Resources, Senior Manager of Consulting Services, Manager of IdeAAs In Action and Corporate Administrator for two cost reduction programs for all North American factories.
Jim has five publications to his credit; Reviewing the Effectiveness of your Suggestion System and Creative Thinking Seminar, both published by N.A.S.S. in Chicago, Illinois. He was co-editor of the popular Legal Guidelines for Suggestion Systems, which he has presented in a workshop series for numerous organizations. Smart Networking for Business and Personal Success, Corporate to Entrepreneur– Strategies for Success, both published by Mira Digital Publishing in St Louis.
A few of Jim’s honors include: Voted one of the Best Bosses in St. Louis – Awarded 2017. Voted one of the Top 100 people to know in Business in St. Louis – Awarded 2016 & 2018. Founders Award Recipient – for his work in the field of Employee Involvement (one of only 20 people in the United States to receive this honor). President of the National Association of Suggestion Systems. Founder and first President of the Midwest Chapter of N.A.S.S. located in Moline, Illinois. Co-founder of the Central States Chapter of N.A.S.S. located in Tulsa.
Received Certification and elected to the Board of Examiners for the Oklahoma Quality Award Foundation. Appointed to the Governor’s Quality Council for the State of Oklahoma by Governor David Walters. Appointed to the Board of Examiners for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. Chairman for Section 1409 of the American Society for Quality Control in Tulsa. Appointed an Examiner for the Excellence in Missouri Foundation and also served as a Judge for the Team Quality Award. Co-Founder of the PeopleSoft Regional User Group in St. Louis. Co-Founder of ExecLink “Executives helping Executives” in St Louis.
Jim has developed and presented workshops, speeches and panel discussions to professional and civic groups as well as companies covering thirteen states within the U.S., Canada, Australia, Europe and Saudi Arabia. He has belonged to or participated in, twenty-three civic and professional organizations at either a local, state or national level.
He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University. He is also is recognized as a Project Management Professional (PMP) by the Project Management Institute, Certified Manager of Suggestions Systems (CMSS) by N.A.S.S., as well as an Able Toastmaster Gold (ATM) from Toastmasters International.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
The more you help others without expecting something in return, the more you will be rewarded along your journey. I always try to help and give advice from what I have learned. One piece of advice is: If you’re a small business owner or lack the net-working pull of a large organization or corporation, I do have some advice for you: Don’t give up. You’ve got to just keep going. When you’re a small business, people haven’t heard of you. [Your ability to network is] going to rely on you and your relationships—rather than your business name—to get in the door to talk with someone.
When you’re a small business, you don’t have that brand name so therefore, it relies on your integrity, your reputation, and your name within the community. You can’t give up. You just have to keep going. To learn more about our passion for networking and helping other people, you can read my booklet on Smart Networking. Then get out there and start networking! Remember, be a giver and not one who always expects something in return. Good things will happen if your heart and your actions are in the right place to help the other person.
Contact Info:
- Email: james.canada@alliance-corp.co
- Website: www.alliance-corp.co
