Cape Breton Firm Expands Into Downtown Truro
Stewart Sommers owns and operators WebDocs, which is located in downtown Truro.
Stewart moved his family and business into the hub town over the summer and says he’s already
witnessing new sales growth.
Web Docs Ready for Growth in Downtown Truro
The CoRDA Connection, By Alan Johnson
Stewart Sommers and his company, known as WebDocs, have embarked on a bold new course. With some help from CoRDA’s business re-location and expansion service, they decided to lease centrally-located and affordable office space in Downtown Truro’s Carleton Building, near the corner of Prince and Inglis Place two months ago. Since that time, things have been going well.
WebDocs has agents and consultants in Ottawa, Sydney and St. John’s, and thanks to being suitably impressed with the talent base in Central Nova Scotia, they’ve already hired two new consultants in the Truro area, with more growth to come.
Sommers’ pitch to customers looking to save money and increase their office efficiency is simple.
“For a lot of places, what they realize is…I’m in a downtown market, in a big city, a Toronto or a Halifax. And I’m taking up two floors at Purdy’s Wharf. It’s costing me a pretty penny because I’m using up one of those floors just for paper storage.”
If WebDocs shows up and scans those paper files because the client is too busy or doesn’t have the expertise to do it, Sommers says not only is the cost attractive, but the increase in staff productivity pays off for years and years. On top of that, WebDocs offers what they call “built-in redundancy”, which means if a primary document server is down for service, a back-up system is going to kick in and take over until the primary server is put back into place.
So how are things going in the new Truro location? “We definitely see Truro as a place from which to grow,” he explains. “Our clients are in the manufacturing, medical office and legal sectors, to name a few, and Truro-Colchester has lots of that, and more.”
Besides storage, WebDocs also offers its clients a secure method with which to transfer their images, without the use of paper.
For instance, when a hospital in Yarmouth, Bathurst or Peterborough needs to send medical test results to a lab, the margin of error is reduced when those results are forwarded digitally, and then sent back the same way. No paper is used, images are clearer and tamper-proof, so there’s less chance of human error, and the medical practitioner saves time, which helps both the patient and the taxpayer. Sommers says despite provincial attempts to make things better, that’s not always the case for a number of hospital systems across the country, which is why his firm is often greeted with open arms.
WebDoc consultants are also creating time and cost-savings for law offices and manufacturers. Sommers says a number of manufacturing offices are realizing that paper is bogging them down. As their lawyers get more up to date on what their paper requirements really are, WebDocs stands to grow. That’s true across the country, but it’s also true here at home.
“My estimation is that there are about 20 sizeable clients that can help serve as a base for WebDocs in Truro and area,” says Sommers. “You’ve got manufacturers and a sizeable medical community here around Colchester’s new hospital. And the problems that people keep creating are what we clean up on the front end.”
Here’s to more growth, and reduced costs for file storage here and across Canada. For more information, contact Stewart Sommers using [email protected]
Alan Johnson is director of marketing and communications for the Colchester Regional Development Association. His column appears in this space each month. He can be reached using [email protected].
