Nanaimo-Based Company Refining the Communication Products and Services it Offers
One of the Communication Connection service vans
NANAIMO – As Communication Connection celebrates its 30th year in business in 2023, the central Vancouver Island company is refining the communication products and services it provides to customers.
“Some of our most popular products right now are what is termed as Unified Communications, which is a fancy term for a single application to integrate all voice, text and video communications into a single interface,” explains General Manager Stewart Irwin. “For our customers, it simplifies their internal communications, allows them to search through messages, and makes scheduling meetings very simple.”
Over the past two years, the company has steadily grown their telecommunications product offerings, although their largest market still remains the long-term care industry.
Stewart Irwin is General Manager of Communication Connection
“In that market, we provide integrated communications with nurse alert systems that inform care givers of any urgent issues within the building or for a particular resident,” Irwin explains. “The contextual information given to care providers can include pinpoint location, building alerts such as water leaks/spills or fire alarms, in room wall mounted alarms, wearable alarm buttons, motion alerts, door entry or exit alarms.”
“In most cases now these alarms are delivered on a robust smart device that can provide the ability to communicate back to other team members with information on who is responding and provides accurate reporting for the facility managers.”
Irwin started with Communication Connection in 2020, just as Covid 19 started, and successfully navigated the company through the pandemic, despite the fact the construction of health care facilities slowed to a crawl. Not only that, but the majority of employees began working from home, and supply chain shortages due to microchip manufacturing delays and delivery difficulties made things even more challenging.
“I manage the strategic direction and day-to-day operations of the company, and those were tough times to navigate, but we managed to get through,” Irwin recalls.
Communication Connection was started by Teresa and Darren Hauca in 1993, who sold the business to a Vancouver based investor in 2018.
Irwin says business has been steady over the past few years, and he notes that some major transitions in technology vendors that formerly provided products have exited the market, meaning Communication Connection has had to add new suppliers to meet demand.
“We will be focusing heavily on leveraging the past 20 years of IT experience in the long-term care industry to better serve our small to medium sized business clients,” he says. “Cyber crime is an increasingly dangerous threat to all businesses, and we will be focusing on providing more services to ensure that their systems are safe from outside intrusion and cyber theft.”
“Our success is driven by the dedicated employees who understand the needs of our clients and work diligently to provide excellent service,” Irwin states. “That expertise is very valuable to our clients and Communication Connection as we enter into an exciting new phase.”
