British Columbia Innovation Council

For most small businesses, landing a new client is a good, actually, a great thing. But what do you do when you suddenly acquire 700 at once?

Three years ago, Robert and Mary Ducharme of Kelowna's Ducharme Landscapes faced that challenge when they took over another company. Tasked with the administrative nightmare of trying to schedule service calls to winterize the irrigation systems of all 700 new clients in the month of October, the husband and wife team didn't buckle under the pressure, rather, they gave up their Thanksgiving turkey dinner.

That year, the Ducharmes dedicated their holiday weekend to emailing and calling customers, dispatching workers and manually creating efficient service routes each day. Determined to avoid the same scenario year after year, the entrepreneurial-minded duo put on their thinking hats and came up with a solution - a web-based geographic scheduling system.

The Ducharmes found existing scheduling systems too focused on CRM or accounting.  The solution developed by the Ducharme's has proven to enhance service efficiency, reduce administrative workload and increase revenues. In fact, two years later, 200 of Ducharme's winterization customers were able to book themselves online and Robert and Mary enjoyed a deserving four-day Thanksgiving weekend.

Ducharme Landscapes has advanced to the final round of the 2^nd annual BCIC-New Ventures Competition: Regional for its innovative scheduling solution.

Late last year, the startup was named a top five finalist in the Accelerate Okanagan Jump:Start:Challenge.

Click here for more about Ducharme Landscapes Inc. and Accelerate Okanagan's Jump:Start:Challenge on their website, blog and BCIC's blog.

Good luck to the Ducharme Landscape! Winners of the BCIC-New Ventures Competition: Regional will be announced on February 23, 2012 in Kelowna, BC.

www.ducharmelandscapes.com

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