ABOUT US

On a mission to create the future of IT sourcing.

Today’s IT sourcing is filled with bias and inefficiencies. Olive is changing that.

Our Founding Story

In 2018, a salesman sat at Calgary airport reflecting on another successful sales meeting. He knew the solution was a bad fit for the customer, but by commandeering the buying cycle, his company had successfully beat out a better-fit competitor.

“There has to be a better way for buyers to make major IT decisions,” the salesman thought. He knew firsthand just how much bias there was in the process.

That salesman—Olive CEO Chris Heard—had the idea to build an AI-powered IT consultant to help buyers make unbiased IT decisions. After finding the perfect co-founder in Dan Harrison, Olive was born: the first platform purpose-built to help buyers navigate their most important IT decisions.

“There has to be a better way for buyers to make major IT decisions.”

– Chris Heard, CEO and Co-Founder

Our Core Values

Impartiality

We believe in providing unbiased and fair assessments, ensuring that every decision and recommendation is based solely on objective data and thorough analysis. By prioritizing impartiality, we deliver accurate and trustworthy insights that our clients can rely on to make informed decisions.

Transparency

We are dedicated to open and honest dialogue with our clients and stakeholders. Our processes, decisions, and communications are clear and accessible, fostering an environment of trust and accountability. Transparency is the cornerstone of our commitment to ethical practices and mutual respect.

Innovation

We strive to be at the forefront of technological advancement and creative problem-solving. Our commitment to innovation drives us to continually explore new ideas and implement cutting-edge solutions that enhance our clients’ success. Embracing change and fostering a culture of innovation is key to achieving excellence.

Product Growth

Early stage
2019 to 2020

Chris and Dan realized that in order to build an AI IT consultant, they would first need to gather the data required to deliver AI insights. To do that, they would need a platform that delivers value today. The most tedious part of the buying process is often identifying and managing the business requirements.

Olive’s first iteration was a robust requirements management platform designed to help streamline this part of the process.

2021:
RFx platform

Next, the team set about fleshing out the buying process by expanding functionality further to enable vendor and stakeholder management. Now companies were able to issue full RFPs and RFIs, saving months of research and increasing success rates. No more cat-herding, no more inboxes chock-full of vendor emails—Olive users could be fully in control of the software sourcing process.

2022:
Extended use cases

Including pricing and early-stage discovery functionality, Olive’s use cases expanded beyond RFIs and RFPs to offer vendor lifecycle management tools, making it a must-have resource for all parts of the software sourcing process.

Now, buyers could use Olive for:

Early-stage project discovery
Build vs. buy decisions
Vendor management
Tracking tech stack ROI

This additional functionality enabled many consulting firms to take advantage of Olive to deliver significantly more value to their clients.

2023:
Olive AI

Taking advantage of advances in generative AI, the team incorporated artificial intelligence across the application to help recommend requirements and solutions to potential buyers. The Olive AI now offers a co-pilot in all major IT decisions, guiding them each step of the way with data (not bias).

This functionality gives teams much of the benefit they would get from a third-party consultant, or an internal PMO team, without having to make those capital-intensive investments. Buyers can rest easy knowing they made the right decision, one without vendor influence, while vendors can make a right-fit sale that increases the likelihood of client retention.

2024 and beyond:
Unbiased market insights

After building a wealth of data over the years, Olive can now collate that data to produce detailed reports on top software categories based on real peer information. Olive’s ability to produce these reports without the need for vendor financing enables Olive to deliver the first truly unbiased analyst reports.

Our Investors

“It would be a mistake to drop Olive and go back to the traditional way of selecting software vendors after seeing the value that it brings.”

What Our Customers Say

It’s simplified our vendor evaluation process tremendously. I wouldn’t want to go back to doing all that we’re doing right now in Olive, in spreadsheets!

Morris E. Harris

Principal Consultant

Instead of issuing a large formal RFP, we found Olive.

Chris Abrams

Director of Innovation

We are excited about the opportunity to level up, rip and replace our tech stack and ensure that what we’re ripping and replacing it with is the best option for PRMI.

Corban Wells

Corban Wells, Director of Product Management at Primary Residential Mortgage

We’re going to use Olive over and over again, it would be stupid not to. The cost savings that we will gain on the first two new restaurants that we on board with this new point of sale will pay back everything we’ve invested in Olive.

Sean Thompson

IT Director

Olive is essential for strategic digital transformation. If you’re managing digital transformation, or looking to change vendors, you need Olive. Olive is a much-needed tool for evaluating and implementing enterprise technology solutions. It’s a unicorn!

Nouf AlZamil

Leader of Digital Transformation

Olive gives me a tool to consistently decrease my cost of goods bought.

Alan Zych

VP IT

Traditionally, there’s a weakness in selecting technology solutions that deliver impactful, measurable results… With Olive, you take that emotion and bias out of the process, giving you better data to base your decision off.

Tariq Chaudhry

PMP

I have seen a good requirements gathering process take anywhere from 2-3 months. With Olive, we completed it in 2 weeks.

Mark Tucker

Director of HR Technology and HR Analytics

It would be a mistake to drop Olive and go back to the traditional way of selecting software vendors after seeing the value that it brings.

Ken Kennery

IT Business Solutions Manager - Dealer Support

Our Founders

Chris

Dan

Chris Heard
CEO

Chris Heard, the CEO and co-founder of Olive Technologies, began his entrepreneurial journey in England with the launch of a portable cocktail bartending service, “Bars in Action.” After kicking off a sales career in insurance in 2009, Chris moved to Vancouver, where he played a pivotal role in the growth of local startup Mobify, initially as the head of business development and later as a senior account executive. From there, Chris led sales teams for various tech companies across the US. In 2018, driven by a vision to revolutionize how enterprises adopt and purchase technology, Chris co-founded Olive Technologies. Building a mission to bring bias, transparency, and efficiency to enterprise IT decision making.

Dan Harrison
Head of Data Enablement

Dan Harrison, co-founder and Head of Data Enablement at Olive, leverages his dual expertise in software engineering and sales to drive technological innovation. With a background at Mobify, Yottaa, and Hyperwallet, Dan co-founded Olive to help organizations streamline digital transformation, with the goal of making enterprise technology adoption more efficient and effective. His work focuses on optimizing technology adoption processes for enterprises, ensuring they can efficiently evaluate and integrate new technologies, reducing biases and improving decision-making.

News & Resources

Explore insights into enterprise software sourcing, RFx operations and digital transformation.