Twitty-Ann Thomas is paving the way for more women to excel. (Photo: Adrian Creary, Studio Craft)

Founder and CEO of ChannelPro and newly appointed Vice President of Marketing at the Jamaica Technology and Digital Alliance (JTDA), Twitty-Ann Thomas says working at her father’s company at the age of nine nurtured her entrepreneurial flair. Being the eldest of five children, Thomas will soon be taking on operational tasks, such as writing quotes, making payments and generating invoices for clients.

Years later, these early experiences helped her land positions in the corporate world of Fujitsu, Digicel and DLM Group (Hawkeye and Ranger Security), where she rose to the challenges and excelled in her various roles as direction. However, Thomas, the innate entrepreneur, intuitively knew that with her 15+ years of combined experience, it was the right time to start a business, leveraging her dynamic skills and business acumen.

ChannelPro is a business services and outsourcing company serving clients in Jamaica and overseas. As an entrepreneur, Thomas takes great pride in ChannelPro helping his clients, especially MSMEs, achieve sustainable growth, positively affecting their bottom line through increased revenue.

His team has always valued and leveraged technology, even before the pandemic, making the transition to remote work easier. ChannelPro used cloud services, allowing its staff to work remotely seamlessly. They used Zoho, a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, to manage pre-sales, after-sales processes and ticketing systems. Other online tools included Microsoft Teams for customer engagement and internal virtual staff lymes. Thomas also noted that his company has integrated its private branch exchange (PBX) system into staff mobile devices with software clients, an application that enables VoIP phone calls from a computer, tablet or mobile device. a mobile device. “Technology has always been an integral part of organizational workflows and communication, but since COVID it has intensified,” Thomas noted.

One of the achievements of the pandemic was how technology went beyond everyday tasks, such as buying food, visiting doctors and banking. “All of these services, which are typically available through face-to-face and physical interactions, could be accessed exclusively online. It taught me how important digital technology is in our daily lives,” added Thomas.

She said it has become more apparent that technology is no longer nice but a necessity for doing business and everyday tasks, and with video conferencing solutions and cloud adoption more widespread than ever. “We’ve seen the boom in food delivery apps to access our basic needs and the use of telemedicine for doctor visits. We have also seen a shift in traditional brick-and-mortar businesses, where the pandemic has taught us that through digital transformation, this is no longer necessary as more and more business transactions are done online,” said said Thomas.

ChannelPro’s plans include expanding into other markets in the region, and partnering with Genius Digital Commerce, to offer e-commerce, website development and digital marketing, and introduce market research services and data analytics in the second half of 2022. Thomas observed that his company changed from an outsourcing business to a fully enabled digital service provider due to the new way of doing business and adopting the digital trends resulting from the pandemic.

Ultimately, Thomas wants to continue to blaze a trail that empowers other women to lead and dominate the business and STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) landscape. She believes that through her foundation and mentorship program, she can help young girls achieve their dreams and unleash their full potential, regardless of their current circumstances.

Thomas believes that by paying it forward, she can provide her mentees with the tools, resources, and platforms to excel while reducing the statistics associated with failure for girls from lower socio-economic backgrounds. “One step at a time, this will change the face of our future and Jamaica and ultimately benefit us all,” Thomas stressed.

Twitty-Ann Thomas (Photo: Adrian Creary, Studio Craft)