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Asset management for the modern age

Veracity Connect manages assets for utilities companies
Veracity (transformers)
Veracity Asset Management Group, based in Sault Ste. Marie, is serving a niche market among utilities companies, offering them mutual aid and asset management services on a cloud-based platform.

When the power goes out, municipal utilities need to get back up online as quickly as possible to reduce downtime for their customers.

For hundreds of companies across Canada and the U.S., Veracity Connect helps them do just that.

Veracity Connect is an online, cloud-based platform that offers mutual aid services to more than 1,200 utilities across North America. And it was developed by business partners based in Sault Ste. Marie.

Graham Nelson and Rob Krysa had bandied about the idea of forming a company as early as 2011, but nothing materialized in earnest until two years later.

Krysa had a background in investment recovery, while Nelson had extensive IT experience, and the pairing proved to be just the right combination to provide for an underserved market.

“Rob had been to a number of industry trade shows over the years and knew that there was a niche in the market in Canada that wasn't being met,” said Nelson, who serves as CEO of Veracity Asset Management Group.

“We started to communicate with utilities and energy companies and found out that, in fact, that was an underserved market. So it was really that kind of background that Rob brought to the table, from an investment recovery perspective, that had us going down that path.”

Key to the company’s brisk growth was entering the U.S. market at the end of 2014. With 3,000 public utilities in the U.S. it could have been a daunting task to know where to start, but the partners took the smart route.

“Rather than try to reach out to 3,000 utilities, we reached out to the 50 or 60 statewide associations that exist and formed partnerships with them to provide this platform,” Nelson said. “That strategic relationship is what has allowed us to spur this growth.”

Now, 90 per cent of their customers are located in the U.S., although they also serve a large number of companies in Ontario and western Canada as well. SaskPower, Epcor, Enmax, AltaLink, Atco, and Forus B.C. are among the companies they call clients.

Mutual aid agreement is the backbone of the Veracity Connect platform.

In the event of an emergency, clients can receive and send mutual aid alerts and messages, receive real-time information on the availability of spares inventories, gain access to third-party suppliers of backup equipment and mobile units, and more.

Clients can also track their assets, manage critical infrastructure and share critical spares, and manage their surplus, obsolete and end-of-life assets.

“There's a long history of one utility helping another in the U.S.,” Nelson said.

“They have all kinds of hurricanes and tornadoes and ice storms, and because municipal and co-op utilities are relatively small, they don't have the resources they need to be able to do all the work that comes about when a storm hits.”

Until Veracity Connect came along, utilities were managing their assets the old-fashioned way: with a binder of information updated manually.

Now, that information can be accessed instantaneously, from any mobile platform, and individual companies can update their information quickly and efficiently.

Nelson said Veracity still has work to do to make each of the utilities and the users more active, but the partners are looking to expand beyond their current borders.

The Caribbean has been targeted as a future market, in addition to other sectors that could easily adapt the technology.

“We work today primarily with electric utilities, but there's a similar need within water and wastewater, gas, and broadband utilities as well,” Nelson said.

“So that's kind of another market segment within North America, and then potentially across the globe, if and when we decide to go that route.”

Last August, after two years at the Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre, Veracity moved into a new downtown office with lots of room for growth.

It currently has five employees, including one in Reno, Nevada, which serves NV Energy, one of their large clients.

But it’s looking to grow.

“We're looking to hire four, five, six, eight people over the next 12 months, including software developers and sales and marketing people, to help us achieve that growth and make sure that we're successful with our current customers,” Nelson said.

At a time when cloud-based applications can be run from just about anywhere, Nelson and Krysa — both sons of Sault Ste. Marie — want to remain in their hometown and keep other ambitious youth at home, too.

“We’ve been fortunate enough to find some good Algoma University grads and have access to a number of different Northern Ontario funding programs,” Nelson said.

“(Sault Ste. Marie) is home for us, and for us to grow jobs within this community is our ultimate goal.”