Flybits was born in a university research lab in 2008, by Professor Hossein Rahnama. He recognized that humans make decisions using different inputs and sources of information. It was a time when people were being bombarded with information while devices were getting smaller. An opportunity existed, to apply context to data and deliver relevant recommendations. It’s only with context that our physical and digital worlds can seamlessly connect, to bring experiences that are more impactful than we’ve ever seen before.
What are your aims, visions and ideals?
At Flybits, we believe that bad data sells and better data serves. We recently launched an open letter to Canada’s top national newspaper, the Globe and Mail. In it, we discuss the true promise of the Data Age. When data is protected, organized, secured, and delivered through the right channels, its power can work for us: relieving stress, fostering connections, and improving lives. We feel there is a huge opportunity for trustworthy, accountable financial institutions to be the standard-bearers of better data use.
The data economy requires a new paradigm where data is treated as an asset class. And there is a major opportunity (and need) for banks to bring trust into the mix, and reimagine their business models.
Tell us about the services you offer to your customers?
Flybits empowers banks to engage an audience of one, at scale. Through our leading customer experience platform, banks can incorporate a human touch on their digital channels, and service customers through a dynamic feed of data-driven insights, personalized recommendations, and advice. While banks leverage our live-feed, we also prepackage all the relevant points of interaction — that help customers buy a home, save, manage debt, or onboard to a new product. Marketers activate these turnkey services to both help customers and drive real results. We enable the world’s top financial institutions to advance beyond transactions and be with their customers in the moments that matter.
Mention some of your contributions to the technological sector of the economy.
Flybits has built their product with financial institutions in mind. Ensuring that the solution we offer can address the problems in which they face. Namely, Flybits is an end-to-end and a fast time-to-market solution that was built with privacy and scalability in mind. What’s more, we bring financial institutions the power of context to address the demand of highly personalized, “always on” customer experiences. Flybits holds a patent portfolio with 11 patent filings under 3 families, combining the strength of semantic computing with data intelligence, machine learning and software engineering design patterns. And with a focus on customer centricity and intuitiveness, Flybits customers have a significant competitive advantage as they transform their digital channels with predictive, contextual intelligence.
Flybits has successfully helped FIs deliver hyper-personalized and predictive customer experiences to achieve business objectives. For example, a major bank in North America that leverages Flybits’ technology saw a 43% increase in user engagement in their mobile channel after implementing Flybits. Another major bank in Latin America achieved a 164% increase in offer redemption after personalizing customer experiences using Flybits.
- Enlighten us about the notable recognitions and accreditations you have received as a company Flybits successes continue to be recognized at home and abroad.
- The Globe and Mail named us amongst the Top 100 Growing Companies in Canada for our exceptional growth over the last three years.
- Barclays has recognized us as a Highly Commended company. The criteria for this honor is based on a combination of disruption, impact, scale, and diversity of a product.
- The University Waterloo awarded our HR team with their Generation Award, which highlights the continuous focus and impact we have made in developing the next generation of talent.
- The Great Place to Work Certification, a direct result of our employees and their pride in working for Flybits.
In 2019 alone, were also recognized by:
- Deloitte – as one of Canada’s fastest-growing technology companies as a 2019 Technology Fast 50™ award winner by Deloitte.
- Frost & Sullivan awarded Flybits for best practices in Technology Innovation in global customer experience technology for the financial services market.
- Recognized in The Fintech Power 50, an annual guide to the most influential, innovative, and powerful figures in the Fintech industry.
- LinkedIn included Flybits on its 2019 Top Startups list in Canada, recognizing the organization as one of the hottest high-growth global companies to work for in the country.
- CIX, Canada’s largest curated startup investment conference, named Flybits to its annual list of Top 10 Growth companies — a list that recognizes innovative, mature startups with high potential to scale.
- How has the pandemic affected the tech market in Canada? Is your company changing with the market?
The pandemic brought with it a great amount of uncertainty. Flybits, along with our customer base, was impacted dramatically, not only from a revenue growth standpoint but also on an organizational level where we had to quickly mobilize our entire employee-base to a new working environment, while working closely with our customers who faced significant challenges.
When the pandemic hit, most banks around the world entered a crisis mode of accelerating and building digital capabilities to catch up to where they should have been. Inspired to be a catalyst for change and empowered by our entrepreneurial spirit, we have collectively emerged stronger from what was a very difficult year. We have been able to advance our product with a framework that makes it easy for our customers to integrate data, we built template experiences for our customers to go-to-market faster, and created audience optimization – an intelligence layer that helps banks better target their customers.
Modern technology has changed human thinking and its existence. With the rapid advancement towards globalization, what do you think the post-pandemic market will look like for tech companies?
The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation for many organizations with an emphasis on advancing customer experiences to be more in tune with personal needs and requirements. For tech companies, this will translate to collaborating with external partners to build robust customer ecosystems that can provide relevant and contextualized experiences.
