In order to take your business idea towards being a commercialized company you’ll need to have a strategy on how you’ll go-to-market by selling your products and/or services. Our Go-to-Market Strategy module teaches you the essentials for business planning and strategy and challenges you to use our custom resources to turn your Business Model Canvas into a long-form business plan. Setting milestones, planning and strategy will assist in further obtaining real data from transactions with customers that you can then use in validating your early minimum viable products (MVP) in the marketplace.

In order to enter the market, you must first understand its inner workings. The most reliable way to uncover the layers within the market you’re entering is through adequate primary and secondary market research. This session will show you how to use your time wisely and determine what data you really need while gathering the intel you need to complement your problem statement. It will also give you the lens to create accurate customer profiles as per the Value Proposition Design. Knowing who your customers are and how they’ll experience the journey of buying your product or service is important in setting up your overall go-to-market strategy.

When you’ve got enough data about your industry, market and target audience, it’s time to ensure your minimum viable product is designed to succeed. Through this session, you’ll learn how to consider designing processes and products so that they are customer-centric and are solving the real problems that the market is experiencing. Mapping the client journey and anticipating their needs and preferences will enable a product or service offering to build brand preference and loyalty over time. Branding is not marketing; it is the treatment that informs your marketing plan and tactics – it needs to connect with the key messaging and problem you’re trying to solve in the industry.

A large part of your go-to-market strategy will be creating a solid marketing plan and developing the right pricing to incorporate in your sales strategy. During this session, we’ll cover the components of the marketing plan, how to align it with your data and research so that you’re targeted and can then explore some creative ways to get selling! All operations have different resource constraints and talent and it’s important to build according to this. We’ll take you through the major components in the marketing plan to make sure you know how to bring it into action and successful commercialization.

When getting your products and services to market, you need to be able to count on how the end-user experiences the process. Building relationships with and understanding your customers, while also knowing your supply chain to avoid unexpected occurrences, will aid in fulfillment of promises to customers and it will give you a level of operational insight as you maintain and grow your business. Project management professional and instructor at the University of Lethbridge’s Dhillon School of Business, Kris Fleckenstein, joins us to provide clear awareness of the considerations that are paramount when building out your distribution strategy. You’ll be ready to start your build by the end of this course so that you can activate it soon!

Now you have all the pieces of your go-to-market strategy underway! It’s time to assemble all the pieces and take a look at the big picture. Do you have everything you need? Have you built your milestones, KPIs and a database of models for collecting metrics as you go? Tecconnect Business Advisors can work with you on the finishing touches and their coaching sessions are accessible and free of charge to anyone on the Tecconnect Entrepreneur Program. By the end of this session, you’ll be well on your way to shaping your vision from an idea into a business.

In today’s information age, data is currency! How can you do business without it? Informed business decisions require capturing, managing and processing robust real-life data. Participants will analyze and cross-tabulate data, as well as learn how to use the Tableau software, which is widely used in multiple industries. The goal for the next two session is to help learners develop a business idea base based on data and Internet of Things (IoT) and build a Business Model Canvas around it.

How did the Internet of Things (IoT) lead to the Big Data boom? What value does it provide to companies? These and many other IoT-related questions will be answered, as well as provide a historical and theoretical background. Participants will also learn how to build an IoT application which incorporates sensors and actuators. Hardware will be provided, so all you need to bring is your curiosity and love for learning!

In this session, participants will understand the value of regression, classification and clustering in the context of business. It will also address concerns around the challenge of unsupervised learning and how machine learning links to other technologies. Learners will also be introduced to Gretl, one of the prominent softwares used in machine learning.

Participants will be introduced to the concept of Deep Learning as it pertains to industry needs. This course will highlight the intersection and connectivity of Data Analytics, Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Learning, as well as how they can be leveraged in the business landscape. It will also bring to light how the science of machine learning draws inspiration from innate and human cognitive and psychological processes.

Participants will learn about the cutting-edge artificial neural network architectures. The end-of-module highlight will include using the neural network for image classification and gain practical experience on how to derive results. The main goal at the end of the series is to give participants the knowledge on how to build machine learning and deep learning models to make predictions based on industry data.

While all entrepreneurs face challenges, Business Link and Economic Development Lethbridge/Tecconnect acknowledge that immigrants face additional barriers to starting and running a business. That’s why we've partnered to bring together Business Link's specialized support to aspiring and established immigrant entrepreneurs across Southern Alberta.

While all entrepreneurs face challenges, Business Link and Economic Development Lethbridge/Tecconnect acknowledge that immigrants face additional barriers to starting and running a business. That’s why we've partnered to bring together Business Link's specialized support to aspiring and established immigrant entrepreneurs across Southern Alberta.

In anticipation of the launch of the Trade Accelerator Program (TAP) cohort in Lethbridge this April please join Shona Reilly; Trade Coordinator to hear about TAP and how it can support Southern Alberta Companies on their export journey. This is a complimentary lunch and learn where we will explore success stories, key factors to consider when exporting and programming/ services available to Albertan companies!