2022 was a year of extraordinary growth for OCR Canada. Commencing with the recruitment of staff across our regional offices, the acquisition of two new companies, and the expansion of our office locations, OCR has strengthened its position as a market leader in supply chain logistics across Canada.
In terms of market demand, the evidence is clear: more Canadian businesses are increasing their investment in technology aimed at automating key points in their supply chains. This year, OCR Canada observed a surge in demand for digital enablers within the supply chain, particularly hand-held mobile devices. Commonly used for improving efficiency in inventory management and asset tracking across a range of sectors including retail, transit, and healthcare, these types of devices aid in reducing operating costs and providing supply chain visibility. Supply chain managers now have the capability to adapt to digital operations and drive actionable improvements from data, allowing them to better mitigate major interruptions. As the recent pandemic exposed many supply chain gaps, many organizations are deploying de-risking strategies and counting on our expertise at OCR Canada to empower their transition.
Acquisitions
In April, we obtained two leading businesses in the Canadian market in two weeks, with the addition of EXA Systems and Day2Mobility. EXA Systems was founded and based in Saint-Laurent, Québec, and had been providing logistic and automation solutions to the region for over 35 years. They were awarded the 2021 Alpha Award for excellence and dynamism in Manufacturing (Electronic Products and Equipment, Information Technology category) by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Saint-Laurent – Mont-Royal, Québec. Their top-tier team creates world-class solutions for Print and Apply Labelling, Automation, Machine Vision, Dimensioning, and Weight Scaling in a variety of industry sectors for customers across Canada.
Day2Mobility, based in Ontario, began operations in 2012 and was an established market leader in consumer-grade smartphone and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, offering professional services such as device configuration, deployment, on-site training, old device decommissioning, and mobile device management.
The addition of these two teams across the country solidifies OCR as Canada’s industry-leading mobile device and service provider. Existing and new, OCR, EXA Systems, and Day2Mobiliy’s customers can now enjoy these new offerings along with our core business solutions of barcoding, telemetric, wireless networking, enterprise mobility, and RFID products and industry-leading services and repair capabilities. We are so proud to have these talented, high-performing units join our team!
New Partnerships
This year also heralded numerous new partnerships for OCR Canada, further expanding our robust portfolio of products and solutions. For the first time, OCR added physical security vendors, GeoVision and Rhombus Systems, and we’re excited about offering these services to our existing clientele. Additionally, AccuSpeech Mobile was brought on as a new partner, to serve our mobile device management customers with voice automation solutions. Our wireless services portfolio has been extended with the onboarding of Juniper Mist; a cloud service based on machine learning. Furthermore, we’ve added smart devices such as Intelligent cabinets and smart lockers, offering some of the most advanced technology on the market to date.
Company Growth
As a company, OCR Canada has experienced an unprecedented staff growth rate for 2022. With the addition of EXA Systems and Day2Mobility, our staff has expanded by more than 50 employees and increased our capabilities significantly in the French province of Québec. We’ve strengthened our Western boundary with a Vancouver office and added a new Ontario sub-office for Consumer Managed Services/IoT. Our new Montréal office will be activated by the end of this year and will be the new home of our existing OCR staff and newly acquired employees from EXA Systems and Day2Mobility. At our Markham headquarters, we are adding an additional unit to accommodate our warehouse expansion and better serve our employees and clientele.
OCR Events
Our annual VIP events were held in October and November in Markham and Montréal respectively. These events were hugely successful thanks to our committed sponsors and attendees, who value the importance of networking and strengthening relationships while exploring new business opportunities. At our Markham VIP event, in partnership with Honeywell and other sponsors, our customers enjoyed an afternoon of virtual golf, product demos, and golf tips from a professional golf coach onsite. Our highly anticipated Montréal VIP event was powered by Zebra and other sponsors and treated customers to a night of networking, product and services demos, and spectacular acrobatic performances. At both events, our customers were introduced to our new Managed Mobile Services and Automation Solutions teams, and their broad portfolio of services.
A message from our Senior Vice President & General Manager – Tony Mastrangeli
“If the last few years taught us anything, the real test of a company’s sustainability and its personnel is how well the organization and its people adapt to change. We are seeing more companies aim to create messaging for their customer base and try to build a culture that reflects their values, leading to growth and retention.
As I look back and review last year and previous years, I am very proud to be part of an organization that not only continues to overachieve in its messaging but bring it to life and makes it real every day. The organization lives and breathes its values of commitment, through its “roll up the sleeves” hard work, and “let’s get it done!” attitude. This organization has a strong foundation of determination to support one another and its customer base. Our company culture excels at enduring challenging moments, making us a clear leader in our market space in Canada. During turbulent times, we held very strong in 2020 which pulled us through, and bounced back strongly in 2021 beyond my highest expectations. We came out with an even stronger and overachieving 2022. This year also saw us add new family members via new hires and acquisitions, expansion of capabilities in regions, new products, and new solutions.
2023 and beyond will continue to be very promising – we have the solid foundation of a positive culture along with the willingness to increase our brand power, and it will continue to move us forward in the marketplace. With our talented and committed teams, growing partnerships, and loyal client base, together, we will continue with internal and external growth to support the move forward.”
Learn more about our solutions: Click here to view