Last year, the technological efforts at Iron Highway led to a Canadian Information Productivity Award (CIPA) — sponsored by a consortium of industry players, including Ernst & Young, Maclean Hunter, the Information Technology Association of Canada, the Centre de recherche informatique de Montreal, the Canadian Information Processing Society, and the Alliance of Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters.
Patricia Glenn, president of Calgary-based Proactive Technology Trading was a CIPA judge. She says the railway has improved productivity for the company and for its customers. “CPR leveraged information technology to meet customers’ needs and increase business, to implement a win-win result.”
Jim Grant, chairperson of the judging committee for systems selection for CIPA, says CPR is “using technology to streamline how people do business with them. It’s just the application of a bunch of technology for solving customers’ problems.”
It’s really all about “making it easy to do business with the company,” he adds. “That’s worth a lot of money, when you think about who you like to deal with.”