ODS Medical saves more than just time with Powerpay

In 2015, Chris Kent, President and CEO of ODS Medical, along with co-founders Eric Maple, Frederic Leblond, Kevin Petrecca, and Kirk Urmey, noticed that neurosurgeons were struggling to successfully detect cancer cells in the brain. The result for patients was that it was either difficult to remove all the cancer cells or sometimes damage happened to healthy tissue around the tumor.

Chris and team, a combination of doctors and engineers, believed they could develop a new technology to fix the problem – so they set to work. With the technology in place, they founded ODS Medical out of Montreal, QC, and began to provide doctors with a new, proprietary way to detect cancer cells in real-time during surgical procedures on the brain.

Like many entrepreneurs, Chris soon became inundated with the day-to-day operational tasks of running a business, one of which was paying their people. Just over a year ago, ODS Medical had four employees, but their new tech was so well received by the medical community that they knew they were going to expand rapidly.

Chris was already feeling like payroll was too time-consuming, as they were using manual processes to pay their people and issuing paper cheques by hand. He knew he needed an easier and more efficient way to process payroll if they were going to hire the volume of additional staff they planned. 

Enter Powerpay

In a few years, ODS tripled their number of employees, making the time savings for Chris even more essential. Chris expressed his dilemma to a fellow Canadian small business owner who happened to use Powerpay. After contacting Ceridian to learn more, ODS Medical made the switch from manual processes to payroll software. 
“It used to take me hours to manually cut cheques just for the four employees I had at the time, not to mention our bookkeeper’s time as well.” Chris explained. “Now I just need to go into Powerpay to authorize employee pay statements.”

The time savings ODS has seen since they started using Powerpay has allowed Chris to spend his time ensuring that the company is able to accomplish their plan, which means raising funds, developing a long-term strategy, meeting with customers, executing on partnerships, and continuing to develop their technology. 

Turning dreams into reality

The unique cancer-detecting technology developed by ODS Medical has been so successful during neurosurgery, that Chris and his team have begun to think about how to apply their technology towards detecting cancer in other areas of the body. While the focus is still primarily on the brain, ODS has begun to adapt the technology to recognize cancer in the prostate as well as the lungs. 

Ceridian Powerpay is proud to play a role in helping small businesses in Canada save time so they can focus on doing what they love – in this case, saving people’s lives.