HealthSpace (CSE: HS, Forum) added some serious clout to its executive team when the company announced that it had appointed Peter Smyrniotis as Chief Commercialization Officer (“CCO”). Mr. Smyrniotis is a recognized and respected business professional in enterprise technology in the Canadian technology community and the company is betting that his involvement with HealthSpace will help accelerate the company’s aim of revolutionizing public and environment health program management. Stockhouse reporters connected with Mr. Smyrniotis to get a better look at the opportunity he presents for HealthSpace and its investors.
First off, Peter, for those who are unfamiliar, what are some of the highlights from your educational background and how will they assist you in this new position at HealthSpace?
Thank you for making the time to speak with me. I was self-taught in technology by necessity, assisting my family and their ventures in back-office systems. My undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto included a number of fields, and I both volunteered and worked with the campus information technology office supporting Canada’s largest multi-campus educational network. While on a two-year break between my second and third year at the University of Toronto, I worked for Magna International in 1997 through 1998 in Germany. It was a life-changing experience, and actually where my education in enterprise technology truly began. While working abroad during those two-years, I was involved in the implementation of SAP’s R/3 ERP system; I was invited to work on the SMART car project’s engineering team under the leadership of Daimler-Benz; and I further developed a technical translation software suite for engineering and tool & die manufacturing facilities through Magna’s European ventures. Beyond receiving technical training through the Microsoft and Cisco Learning Partner network as a member of their respective vendor teams, I also completed a Master’s in IT Project Management from Royal Road’s University. This cumulative education in enterprise systems technologies combined with my most recent 5-years’ of business working in high-growth technology start-ups in Vancouver, BC and abroad has given me a comprehensive understanding of the value proposition that commercial and public sector enterprises prioritize to deliver value to their respective objectives.
You’ve worked with some pretty big names like TELUS and Apple in your capacity at ARP Technologies, would you describe your role at ARP and also at the Hillcore Group, and how these positions will contribute to your activities at HealthSpace?
ARP Technologies is one of Canada’s leading Cisco Learning Partners, an integral venture that delivers Cisco authorized curriculum solutions, custom and derivative work training plans, and access to the very best in professional service support to leading Canadian and International businesses. My responsibilities as Sales Director for Western Canada have honed my skills & competencies as a problem solver, and have provided me with many years of autonomy working within one of the richest technology eco-systems developing direct, channel and distribution sales plans to deliver share-holder value. ARP’s clients have included such companies as Cisco, TELUS, TECK, Suncor, Bell and Electronic Arts.
I am the technology advisor & entrepreneur-in-residence responsible for guidance on market activities and insights into the high-growth technology sector for Hillcore Technology. I joined the group in 2014 and operate globally, but live here in Vancouver, British Columbia.
I have over 25 years’ experience in the technology industry, having developed skills, competencies and expertise in a number of areas and industries, both private and public. These include global manufacturing, automotive, gaming, software, hardware, enterprise, e-commerce, business development, strategic sales, channel & partnership, cloud brokerages, robotics, and augmented reality. Further I am actively involved in technology incubators & accelerators, advising companies on scalability and growth-hacking.
So what interested you in accepting this appointment at HealthSpace and how would you describe the company and its potential?
That’s the best question to ask! I have been paying attention to what the management team has been doing at HealthSpace for more than a year now. I have observed as the team have taken a business with strong fundamentals in client engagement and support, and prioritized the development of best-in-class mobile and enterprise cloud offerings to ambitiously tackle the global market. My decision to join was predicated on the unanimous decision by the company from management to all the employees to seek out a larger total available market opportunity beyond the 300 state and local government organizations, and showcase HealthSpace’s service offering to commercial enterprise and mid-market companies; and to begin to provide access to our anonymized data. HealthSpace has a rich fabric of data going back more than a decade that will provide tremendous value to other enterprises, government organizations, and researchers. Better still, as Health Space’s top-line sales improve in delivering value to new customers on our new HS Touch and HS Cloud offerings, our database will grow in size and relevance. There’s a great deal to be excited about, and I’m thrilled to be in a position to work with this team to commercialize these technologies further.
What are some of the key milestones you will help the company reach over the next 12 months?
I am joining the team at HealthSpace to help implement a sales process that I have used successfully with a number of other technology companies. There is a significant opportunity to expand the footprint of the company across North America and increase both the top-line revenue and margins with a number of the strategic initiatives that we are focusing on.
What are some of the major challenges you face at HealthSpace in achieving the aforementioned milestones?
HealthSpace’s existing technology is excellent – a feature-rich platform developed over many years with massive benefits to our existing customers. Developing a hosted or cloud offering that delivers this impact to new customers will take a concerted effort from the existing development team. New additions in our product development team have been carefully selected to assess and document the necessary features of our existing platform, and contribute to our 2016 and 2017 product road-map. Also, the current architecture of our data warehousing is solid, but will benefit from the application of health and data, data scientists. HealthSpace has yet to extract the maximum value out of our data, and doing this in a focussed and orchestrated methodology will be crucial to the future success of this venture. Forgive the pun, but there is already a healthy appetite for HealthSpace’s offerings. Developing a richer product suite and a more intelligent delivery system for our data is going to be instrumental to HealthSpace’s future.
What would you say to investors looking at HealthSpace as an option to add to their portfolio?
HealthSpace is an established company with a strong reputation that is currently serving over 300 state and local health departments across North America. The company is in the early roll-out of a new technology suite and is pursuing a strategy to monetize the significant amount of data it collects on a monthly basis. These initiatives present a tremendous opportunity for the company to dramatically increase revenue growth and pursue strategic collaborations.
FULL DISCLOSURE: HealthSpace is a Stockhouse Publishing client.