Kevin Lim, CEO, Lim Geomatics Inc.: Hey, everybody. My name's Kevin Lim. I'm the CEO of Lim Geomatics. Today, I'm joined with Monsieur Gaetan Pelletier. Gaetan, how are you doing today?

Gaetan Pelletier, NHRI: Very good, Kevin, thank you and yourself?

Kevin Lim, CEO, Lim Geomatics Inc.:  Awesome. Good stuff. Good stuff. I'm doing well. Thank you. Maybe take a moment to introduce yourself, who you are, the role, the organization you work for and what you do.

Gaetan Pelletier, Executive Director, NHRI: Yeah, certainly. Well, my name is Gaetan Pelletier. I'm the Executive Director of the Northern Hardwoods Research Institute. We're a private applied research center located in Edmundston, New Brunswick on the campus of University of Moncton. And we have a very novel partnership with industry, private sector, governments and academia. And our purpose really is to try to solve problems within the forest sector. Mostly with regards to the management of mixed and hardwood stands.

Kevin Lim, CEO, Lim Geomatics Inc.: Now fun fact for people, Gaetan and his organization, they were the very first Canadian Prism users. Yeah, you put your trust and faith in Lim Geomatics that we can fulfill a need that you have. But maybe explain to the folks that are watching or listening to this what was that business problem you were trying to solve with Prism?

Gaetan Pelletier, Executive Director, NHRI: The challenge we had was really to come up with an application that would allow us to collect information in the woods. And which is pretty funny because we are a research center that advocates digital forestry and precision forestry. But at the end of the day, whether it is to build our models or train or validate, we need to go to the woods and collect data in a cruising context. And the thing that is different with the cruising that we are doing is we spend a lot of time evaluating quality of hardwood trees, which is not typical around.

Kevin Lim, CEO, Lim Geomatics Inc.: For sure, for sure. Maybe share with us some of your thoughts in terms of that journey of starting with Prism. Where you were, and then where you are today.

Gaetan Pelletier, Executive Director, NHRI: Our journey was good overall, but it was not without the hiccups. The app - when we looked at it - was designed for the Southern US. With that comes issues like the measurement units, the metric system, and the methods of measuring volume and how you assign products and so on and so forth. It took a little while to overcome that. And your team was very good at customizing that basic platform for us.

Kevin Lim, CEO, Lim Geomatics Inc.: For sure, for sure. I think it's a great example when we think about partnerships and bringing innovation to the forestry sector. It's not just one part. You need multiple people bringing diversity, views, experiences to really drive that change forward. Maybe share with us some of the benefits you've realized to date since adopting Prism.

Gaetan Pelletier, Executive Director, NHRI: There are obvious benefits and we're not going back and we are not second guessing our decision. Prism is very professionally built. It's part of an ecosystem of other apps. And the integration is something that we could not create ourselves.

The other benefit is your (Lim Geomatics) team was very quick, not only to answer to our concerns and do a quick one-off on the tool. They would take a step back and then build functionalities. A good example is the equation builder that you created because we asked that our very specific volume and taper equations be incorporated.

That equation builder now will allow many more customizations and integrations. These are some of the obvious benefits from working with a product like Prism.

Kevin Lim, CEO, Lim Geomatics Inc.: What does the future look like for you and NHRI, the use of Prism in the context of where you are in New Brunswick? Share some thoughts, what gets you excited?

Gaetan Pelletier, Executive Director, NHRI: Yes. So far we've just tackled the basics. We finally got the platform where it is very customized to what we need to do. And by the end of April, it will be fully compatible with the way we capture inventory to assign treatments and calculate percentage of products.

The exciting opportunity is that in the next phase, we will be working with Lim Geomatics to integrate the logic that we've developed to assign a similar culture treatment, given inventory information. Very, very soon the Prism platform will be used to not only collect and synthesize inventory information, but also run the logic and then end up with a recommendation for a treatment that we advocate in our system.

Kevin Lim, CEO, Lim Geomatics Inc.: Great to hear and looking forward to seeing that come to fruition in the next couple months. Gaetan, thanks so much for joining me. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. Looking forward to seeing you in person. Thanks so much for sharing your time with us and à bientôt.

Gaetan Pelletier, Executive Director, NHRI: My pleasure.

Do you want to learn more about Prism? Visit: Prism | Lim Geomatics.