What does ex­cel­lence look like in to­day’s busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment in T&T?

Some­times it takes the form of a tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny har­ness­ing da­ta to help busi­ness­es op­er­ate more ef­fi­cient­ly. It can al­so be an en­gi­neer­ing firm ex­port­ing home-grown ex­per­tise across the Caribbean. In oth­er cas­es, it is a re­new­able en­er­gy ad­vo­cate ac­cel­er­at­ing the green tran­si­tion or a me­dia in­tel­li­gence com­pa­ny help­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions nav­i­gate an in­creas­ing­ly com­plex in­for­ma­tion land­scape.

Those di­verse ex­pres­sions of ex­cel­lence took cen­tre stage at the an­nu­al Cham­pi­ons of Busi­ness Awards host­ed by the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce on Wednes­day night, when the coun­try’s most in­no­v­a­tive and for­ward-think­ing com­pa­nies were recog­nised for dri­ving growth, cre­at­ing im­pact and ex­tend­ing T&T’s reach across the Caribbean.

Held un­der the theme “In the Spir­it of Ex­cel­lence,” the awards cel­e­brat­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions that are not on­ly suc­ceed­ing in their re­spec­tive in­dus­tries but are help­ing to re­de­fine what is pos­si­ble for lo­cal busi­ness­es. While they op­er­ate in vast­ly dif­fer­ent sec­tors, this year’s award re­cip­i­ents shared a com­mon thread: a will­ing­ness to in­no­vate, adapt and pur­sue op­por­tu­ni­ties be­yond tra­di­tion­al bound­aries.

To­geth­er, their sto­ries paint a com­pelling pic­ture of a pri­vate sec­tor that is in­creas­ing­ly lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy, spe­cialised ex­per­tise and en­tre­pre­neur­ial vi­sion to build com­pet­i­tive busi­ness­es ca­pa­ble of thriv­ing both at home and through­out the re­gion.

Turn­ing da­ta in­to a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage

Among the stand­out re­cip­i­ents was Desmond Dougall, Group CEO of Gis­cad Ltd, which cap­tured the Medi­um En­ter­prise Award af­ter more than two decades of in­no­va­tion in the geospa­tial tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor.

Found­ed 23 years ago, Gis­cad was the first com­pa­ny to in­tro­duce GPS track­ing ser­vices in T&T.

Since then, the com­pa­ny has evolved in­to a re­gion­al provider of com­mer­cial fleet man­age­ment and busi­ness in­tel­li­gence so­lu­tions, help­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions con­vert vast amounts of op­er­a­tional da­ta in­to ac­tion­able in­sights.

“We help them un­der­stand how their fleets are be­ing used, how their mo­bile work­force is op­er­at­ing,” Dougall shared with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

That ap­proach has al­lowed the com­pa­ny to move be­yond sim­ple track­ing so­lu­tions and be­come a strate­gic part­ner for or­gan­i­sa­tions seek­ing greater ef­fi­cien­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Its of­fer­ings now in­clude fu­el man­age­ment, route op­ti­mi­sa­tion, main­te­nance sched­ul­ing and health, safe­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal com­pli­ance sys­tems.

As tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues to re­shape in­dus­tries world­wide, Gis­cad is al­ready look­ing to­ward the next fron­tier.

“With the ad­vent of AI, we’re con­stant­ly try­ing to fig­ure out where things are go­ing. The kind of in­for­ma­tion we pro­vide to clients when we drop AI on top of that and bring that in­to the whole sys­tem. It blows up the ca­pa­bil­i­ties that we can bring to clients and helps them un­der­stand how they can do their busi­ness bet­ter,” Dougall said.

For Dougall, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence is not about re­plac­ing peo­ple but em­pow­er­ing them.

By au­tomat­ing repet­i­tive tasks, he be­lieves tech­nol­o­gy could en­able em­ploy­ees to fo­cus on “the more hu­man” parts and “ini­tia­tive” of the job.

En­gi­neer­ing so­lu­tions be­yond bor­ders

While in­no­va­tion may be­gin at home, many of T&T’s most suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies are in­creas­ing­ly find­ing growth op­por­tu­ni­ties across the wider Caribbean.

That re­gion­al suc­cess sto­ry was ex­em­pli­fied by Con­trol Tech­nolo­gies Ltd (CTL), which re­ceived the Break­through Ex­porter of the Year Award for its work pro­vid­ing spe­cialised en­gi­neer­ing so­lu­tions to wa­ter util­i­ty providers through­out the re­gion.

Led by Ken­ny Lue Chee Lip, the mul­ti-faceted com­pa­ny has spent more than a decade build­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for de­liv­er­ing tech­nol­o­gy and ex­per­tise that help util­i­ty com­pa­nies with its main fo­cus be­ing wa­ter in­fra­struc­ture.

“We pro­vide en­gi­neered so­lu­tions for wa­ter util­i­ties like de­tect­ing leaks, fix­ing leaks, un­der­stand­ing the whole net­work dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem and pro­vid­ing sys­tems that mon­i­tor dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works, their lev­els, pres­sures and flows,” Lue Chee Lip ex­plained.

To­day, CTL ex­ports in­to the re­gion and has projects un­der way in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, St Lu­cia, Grena­da and Guyana, ev­i­dence of the grow­ing de­mand for Caribbean-built so­lu­tions to Caribbean chal­lenges.

In the re­gion the com­pa­ny cur­rent­ly gen­er­ates ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$1 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly in ex­port rev­enue and has an es­ti­mat­ed US$4 mil­lion worth of projects in its pipeline, re­flect­ing the scale of op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able to busi­ness­es pre­pared to take a long-term ap­proach to ex­port­ing.

“We pro­vide a com­plete so­lu­tion. We pro­vide the in­stru­ments, in­stall every­thing, com­mis­sion every­thing, train the peo­ple to use it and sup­port all as­pects of the project,” Lue Chee Lip said.

How­ev­er, he em­pha­sised that suc­cess in re­gion­al mar­kets re­quires pa­tience and per­sis­tence.

“You have to put a lot of time, ef­fort and mon­ey in­to pro­mot­ing your prod­ucts be­fore you can even get in­vit­ed to bid and be­fore you can con­vince peo­ple you have the tech­ni­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ties and re­sources,” he ad­vised, as the com­pa­ny sets its sights on ex­pan­sion in­to the Cen­tral and South Amer­i­can mar­kets and even Africa.

Ad­vanc­ing the
Green Agen­da

In­no­va­tion is al­so play­ing a crit­i­cal role in help­ing busi­ness­es and com­mu­ni­ties nav­i­gate the tran­si­tion to­ward a more sus­tain­able fu­ture.

Among those lead­ing that ef­fort is Steffy Heera, chief sus­tain­abil­i­ty of­fi­cer of Re­new­able Pow­er Caribbean Ltd, who was recog­nised with the Green Agen­da Award for her com­pa­ny’s com­mit­ment to re­new­able en­er­gy and en­vi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship.

For Heera, the recog­ni­tion val­i­dates years of ad­vo­ca­cy, ed­u­ca­tion and in­vest­ment aimed at pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able prac­tices across T&T.

“We have been push­ing the green en­er­gy tran­si­tion for four years. We have been do­ing the work on the ground, from ed­u­ca­tion through our school tours to in­stalling clean en­er­gy so­lu­tions and shar­ing knowl­edge on re­new­able en­er­gy and sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” she said.

Since its es­tab­lish­ment in 2022, Re­new­able Pow­er Caribbean has fo­cused on mak­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty both ac­ces­si­ble and prac­ti­cal, com­bin­ing aware­ness ini­tia­tives with re­al-world re­new­able en­er­gy so­lu­tions for busi­ness­es and com­mu­ni­ties.

One of the de­vel­op­ments Heera finds most en­cour­ag­ing is the grow­ing in­volve­ment of younger gen­er­a­tions in sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives.

“Es­pe­cial­ly the young peo­ple, we have a lot of young peo­ple who are push­ing the green agen­da and look­ing at en­vi­ron­men­tal re­silience and sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” she added.

That en­thu­si­asm comes at a time when en­vi­ron­men­tal con­sid­er­a­tions are be­com­ing a strate­gic pri­or­i­ty for com­pa­nies around the world, as Heera said, “Com­pa­nies are now de­vel­op­ing strate­gies in line with en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and gov­er­nance prin­ci­ples to cre­ate sus­tain­able busi­ness­es.”

As sus­tain­abil­i­ty in­creas­ing­ly shifts from a cor­po­rate as­pi­ra­tion to a busi­ness ne­ces­si­ty, or­gan­i­sa­tions such as Re­new­able Pow­er Caribbean are help­ing to dri­ve that trans­for­ma­tion.

Build­ing a Caribbean in­tel­li­gence net­work

The grow­ing sig­nif­i­cance of knowl­edge-based ser­vices was re­flect­ed in the suc­cess of Me­dia In­Site Ltd, which earned the in­au­gur­al Caribbean Ser­vices Ex­porter of the Year Award.

For founder and CEO Al­li­son De­mas, the award rep­re­sents an im­por­tant mile­stone, not on­ly for her com­pa­ny but al­so for the broad­er recog­ni­tion of ser­vice ex­ports as a valu­able con­trib­u­tor to re­gion­al eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

“It’s re­al­ly spe­cial be­cause this is the in­au­gur­al award,” she said.

From its base in T&T, Me­dia In­Site has built a pres­ence across 22 Caribbean mar­kets, pro­vid­ing me­dia and ad­ver­tis­ing in­tel­li­gence ser­vices to clients through­out the re­gion.

“We let com­pa­nies know what is be­ing said about them across var­i­ous me­dia types,” De­mas said adding, “We al­so pro­vide com­pet­i­tive in­tel­li­gence so com­pa­nies know what their com­peti­tors are do­ing and how they mea­sure up.”

Its foot­print now stretch­es from Be­lize and The Ba­hamas to Guyana and Suri­name, demon­strat­ing how spe­cialised knowl­edge and ex­per­tise can tran­scend ge­o­graph­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions.

Like many busi­ness­es, how­ev­er, Me­dia In­Site is nav­i­gat­ing a rapid­ly evolv­ing land­scape shaped by tech­no­log­i­cal dis­rup­tion and chang­ing con­sumer habits.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we are see­ing many me­dia hous­es across the Caribbean, not just in Trinidad and To­ba­go, who have had to fold up,” De­mas said.

Yet de­spite those chal­lenges, she be­lieves trust­ed jour­nal­ism re­mains in­dis­pens­able.

“Lega­cy me­dia has an im­por­tant role be­cause it’s still a source of au­thor­i­ty and a source of truth. It’s a trust­ed form of me­dia,” she said.

Look­ing ahead, De­mas iden­ti­fies ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion as the forces most like­ly to shape the in­dus­try’s fu­ture.

“The def­i­nite trend we are see­ing is more and more re­liance and use of dig­i­tal me­dia,” she said adding, “And of course we now have AI, which is in­cred­i­ble be­cause it can make life much more ef­fi­cient and pro­duc­tive, but at the same time there are is­sues that need to be ad­dressed.”