VizworX is here to help businesses make sense of their data

Calgary-based VizworX has launched a new portfolio of custom software solutions that uses the latest dashboard, virtual reality, and augmented reality techniques to transform data into easily actionable knowledge.

Co-founder and CEO Jeff LaFrenz said the problem of overwhelming volumes of data, as well as the inability to make good decisions, is not unique to any one industry.

“People absorb up to 75 per cent of the information they experience hands-on, as opposed to maybe 20 percent of the information they are exposed to in a passive environment,” said LaFrenz. “Our custom solutions are designed to take complex information sets and present them in a way that is interesting, attractive, and easily digestible.

“Through the application of intuitive, interactive visualization technologies, we enable our clients to understand their data better, derive richer insights and make better decisions.”

The company was incorporated in May 2012, spun out of a cross-Canada research network that was headquartered at the University of Calgary. Seven different universities and a dozen core researchers across the country focused on digital service technologies – what we now know as touch screens.

The company explored how to use technology to better illustrate concepts and allow businesses to make better decisions.

Clients were originally in the oil and gas industry, but the company has diversified its market to include government, construction, defence, and aerospace and broadened its technology portfolio to include immersive technologies, such as augmented and virtual reality as well as artificial intelligence.

Today, it can integrate multiple technologies to create powerful digital experiences that allow companies to gain insight into their data and better communicate with stakeholders.

The company’s headquarters are in Calgary, but it also has a growing division in Brazil.

VizworX has worked with Calgary energy expert Peter Tertzakian and Energyphile/Collection Science to develop an advanced web and mobile-based SaaS environment for enabling organizations to educate their stakeholders through dynamic “bite-sized” information vignettes. VizworX has been used by Energyphile for energy education, by Alberta Innovates for supported company information, by the Alberta government for Women in Energy, by Heritage Park for artifact engagement, by Contemporary Calgary for art interaction, and by the University of Lethbridge for Indigenous education.

The company has also worked with the Canada Energy Regulator to develop highly interactive web-based public engagement visualizations to help understand the Canadian energy industry.

VizworX’s other digital solutions have included a proof-of-concept next-generation virtual- reality-based control room to identify and deter illegal fishing in Canadian coastal waters for the Coast Guard and RCMP, as well as a virtual-reality-based community fire safety simulation for public education on fire prevention and response for the Calgary Fire Department.

It’s also working on building a virtual reality simulator to help train medical students for eye surgery.

The company has also been engaged with NATO. Last year, LaFrenz was invited to be a speaker at a NATO’s Edge conference, which the organization holds annually in Belgium. He was on a panel session discussing how to accelerate the adoption of innovation in NATO through the use of partnership models.