Indigenous-SME Small Business Magazine sits down with Christian Dandeneau, the CEO and Co-Founder of ID Fusion Software, an Indigenous-owned digital transformation company. With over 20 years of experience in the IT and services sector, Christian has been instrumental in establishing ID Fusion as a leader in business process optimization and enterprise software development. His work not only supports diverse businesses in their digital transformation journeys but also fosters opportunities for Indigenous communities and youth, inspired by his Métis heritage and a commitment to positive change.
Christian Dandeneau is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of ID Fusion Software, an Indigenous-owned digital transformation company founded in 1999. With a career spanning over two decades, Christian has established himself as a leader in the information technology and services industry. His expertise includes business process optimization, enterprise software development, and e-commerce solutions.
Under his leadership, ID Fusion has grown to serve a diverse clientele, including small-to-medium sized businesses, large multinational corporations, and government organizations. The company is committed to fostering productivity, creativity, and problem-solving capabilities among its clients and employees, guided by the core values and heritage of its founders.
Christian’s dedication to mentorship is evident through his involvement with North Forge Technology Exchange, where he has been mentoring startup entrepreneurs since 2015. He is passionate about helping new businesses navigate the challenges of market execution and strategy implementation.
In addition to his professional achievements, Christian is actively involved in various advisory roles. He serves on the federal external advisory committee on regulatory competitiveness and is a member of the newly appointed board of directors for Manitoba Public Insurance, where he contributes his extensive experience to public service and governance.
Christian’s Métis heritage is integral to his identity and a cornerstone of ID Fusion’s mission. As a boutique Indigenous Métis technology company, ID Fusion is dedicated to being a catalyst for positive change within Indigenous communities and actively fosters opportunities for Indigenous youth to pursue careers in the IT sector in Manitoba.
Christian, what inspired you and your partners to found IDFusion in 1999, and how did your vision of creating a productive, creative, and empowering environment shape the company’s direction?
I didn’t create the company in 1999 I created it in 1994, but it was set up as a sole proprietorship, and then as my company grew, I joined forces with two my friends from university, Dan Piche and his brother, Rob Piche. When Dan went to finish his doctorate degree at Waterloo, I was working with Rob, his brother, under my company, which was still sole proprietorship in 1999 I sold that company to a new company, IDFusion Software Inc, that had myself, Dan and Rob, as the founders. What motivated me, at the time, was to continue to do what I had started doing, which was to help people solve their business problems using technology. I wasn’t really concerned with the kind of problem, as long as technology was going to be able to potentially solve their problem. It wasn’t until much later that in 2003-2004 that we realized that we were all Métis and that it would be important for us to be able to do something to give back, because of what we saw in terms of the current environment for Indigenous people and Métis and First Nation people in Canada. From that point on, we started focusing on doing things that were going to be helpful to make a positive change for Indigenous people in Canada. To this day, that’s been our core purpose, and something that drives us, as we look at how we make investments with our profits, how we give back, and how we hire and what kinds of clients we work with.
So when we started IDFusion in 1999, I think I had envisioned at that time that the company would become a legacy to my family, maybe, but I wasn’t very clear on the future. Today, we recently just celebrated our 25th year in business, and it’s quite surprising that we’ve had the ability to survive all of these changes in the market, these pitfalls, these decisions that didn’t pan out, the choice of our investments, the team that we had. We recently celebrated one of our first staff’s 25th work anniversary, which means that he has stayed with our company for over 25 years, and we have a few who are going to be reaching the 15 and the 20 year mark. That resilience, I think, is a testament both to ourselves as leaders, in terms of not getting distracted, but very having high perseverance to the work we do, and how people are very passionate about the work we do, and why it’s important to continue to do the work we do. We really make a different for our customers big and small.
IDFusion has evolved significantly since its inception, from building one of the first online marketplaces to leading in mobile app development and digital transformation. Can you share key milestones in this journey and how the company has adapted to changing technological landscapes?
When we started IDFusion, we were essentially professional services consulting company, and then in 2000 we got the idea from one of our business consultant’s friends to build an online shopping platform for small businesses in a way that would allow people to buy from their stores locally and could trust who they were buying from, and that was called My Local Store. We built that until 2001-2002 and then the “.com bust” happened when “.com” companies went out of favor and we failed to raise capital. At that point, we decided to pivot back into professional services, where we would use the skills we’ve learned in building large enterprise e commerce platforms to work with large companies and governments. So, we started working with large partners to deliver development software development services to the Province of Manitoba, to Blue Cross and to Manitoba Hydro, all kinds of big industries. From that point, we essentially focused on our professional services, but we still had the idea of building products and so in 2008, we launched with some of our mobile app developers a product called Bodega, which was a marketplace for software developers who wrote software for the Mac, the Apple platform. This product essentially allowed you to update and manage all the applications you had installed on your Mac and buy new products and install them directly from this marketplace. A few years later, after spending millions of dollars building it and launching it, Apple released the App Store, which was essentially the same product. That essentially meant we had to pivot again, back to our professional services roots, and that product continued in from Apple’s perspective, but we had to shut it down. There was a time where we also launched our first SAP practice, and again, the market sort of changed direction in Manitoba, and so we had to pause that department and refocus. The one constant, I would say that we’ve had to live through is constant change in the technology landscape, in the labor landscape, with globalization in customers’ approach to buying custom software versus on the shelf software, and through all this time, we’ve essentially been listening to the market and adjusting our product and service offerings to match the needs. As we are looking at now how AI is becoming more and more important for companies and how their needs, the needs of companies is more focused on the ability to integrate AI into their day to day operations, and looking for someone who can help them with that.
With IDFusion’s purpose deeply rooted in your proud Métis heritage, how has this influenced the company’s projects and partnerships, particularly in supporting Indigenous communities and organizations?
When we started to identify as an Indigenous company, it wasn’t necessarily a benefit to identify yourself as a Indigenous Métis company, because there was a certain stereotype associated with that. We were more just an afterthought when it came to procurement or strategy or Indigenous inclusion. But as time has come and people have matured, we are more and more finding that Indigenous and non-Indigenous organization are trying to understand how to live concepts of the principles of truth and reconciliation, and are looking at ways to have inclusion of Indigenous companies like ourselves. From that point, I think what we’re seeing is that we are also trying to demonstrate that we can be a role model for young people and for anyone who’s looking at the career of IT and technology, and more and more, the interest in partnering or working with an Indigenous company is becoming important and sought after, so we’re really happy to continue to do our work, but with a focus on Indigenous organizations, as there’s still certain amount of people, vendors and suppliers, that are taking advantage of Indigenous organizations who are not always knowledgeable enough to understand what to buy and how to buy. We try to step-in and help with that.
How do IDFusion’s core values influence your leadership style and the company’s approach to innovation and client service?
Our six core values essentially guide us first at the hiring stage, the kinds of people that we find are going to be a good fit in our company. It guides our interactions with our clients, decisions we make on how we provide services, what kinds of services, how we charge for our services. Innovation is very important, it always has been for us, and two of our core values have to do with knowledge and professional and personal development and growth. And so, because of that, people are always striving to think outside the box, to innovate, to grow, to learn.
As a premium boutique Indigenous technology company in the Praries, how does IDFusion aim to inspire young Indigenous people to pursue careers in technology, and what initiatives do you undertake to support this goal?
The way we inspire young Indigenous people is by finding ways to include them in this field, either through internships, through training programs and partnerships, through career fairs, speaking at these events, building personal connections and being very accessible and being able to lead by example. Some of the initiatives that we have taken over the last 5 to 10 years have been participation with industry sector organizations like Tech Manitoba, previously known as ICTAM, where we had summer camps for young Indigenous students who would be able to learn HTML, programming, robotics, all kinds of technology, sort of playing with technology, during these camps. To more recently, where we were worded funding through the Future Skills Center of Canada to deliver innovative alternative training approaches, and we set up a training program where young people could learn on the job in their community how to support IT infrastructure, computers for their community. The model was very limited in the classroom approach, but hyper focused around on the job experience and so looking at a real problem and then teaching around, what was the knowledge? What was the information, the skills you needed to learn to be able to solve that problem? Our response by the students was very high. They all participated till the end of the program, and today, almost 100% of them are engaged in working in it, in one function or another, or have gone back to school to further their training. In the long run, our hopes is to have four paid internship programs every year in the same format as we’ve had through the Future Skills Center of Canada, and that would allow us to consistently build the capacity in the Indigenous communities around this skill and this experience.
