About us

Built to run a distribution business, then sold to run yours

Name: Novel Systems
Availability: InStock

Novel Systems, an operating division of Novel Blinds Inc., Toronto, ON. The division builds and operates the software; the parent is the legal entity that contracts, invoices, and carries the obligations under it.

Novel Systems did not start as a product. It was engineered inside Novel Blinds Inc. as an internal CPQ and fleet dispatch engine for its wholesale window covering distribution operations across Ontario — configure, price, quote, then get the right crew and the right stock to the right site — because two estimators were the only people in the company who could price a job correctly, and one of them was usually in a van.

In 2025 that internal engine was spun out and commercialised as a standalone, enterprise-grade B2B vertical SaaS platform for industrial distribution and commercial manufacturing fleets. Running a real distribution business on it for 6 years is the whole argument for selling it. The parent is still our first tenant and our least forgiving one.

7
Years building configuration and dispatch software, since 2019.
5
Ontario macro-regions covered, on Canadian-resident infrastructure.
6
Distinct eras, each one a constraint we hit before we built our way past it.

SOC 2 Type II aligned · PIPEDA compliant · AWS ca-central-1 tenant isolation · SAML 2.0 single sign-on

Our vision

Trade knowledge should outlive the person who holds it

Every operation we work with has the same structural fragility: a rule that decides money — a deduction, a discount schedule, a dispatch convention — exists only in one person’s judgement. It works, right up until that person is on holiday, retires, or simply gets it wrong on a Tuesday.

The fix is not to write the rule into application code, which just moves the fragility to a release cycle. The fix is to make the rule catalogue data: declared, versioned, effective-dated, and reviewable by the person who actually knows whether it is right.

That is the whole thesis. Everything else on this site — the constraint solver, the offline journal, the edge deployment — is engineering in service of it.

Publish the measurement, not just the number

Every latency figure on this site states its percentile and where it was taken. A benchmark without conditions is a marketing claim wearing a lab coat.

Business rules belong in the catalogue

A deduction table, a discount schedule, and an approval threshold are data. When they live in application code, changing who signs off on a discount becomes a deployment.

Anything shown to a customer must be reconstructable

Every quote revision and dispatch assignment is an append-only entry. The version of this that survives a dispute is the only version worth building.

Degrade to less, never to nothing

A total network outage should leave a quoting desk quoting and a technician completing jobs. A thin client is a blank screen exactly when it matters.

Growth timeline

Each era started with something breaking

None of these were roadmap decisions. Each one was a constraint we hit hard enough that working around it stopped being cheaper than rebuilding.

2026

Residency and governance formalised

Every tier consolidated onto a multi-AZ active-active footprint in AWS ca-central-1, PIPEDA alignment documented end to end, and a SOC 2 Type II observation window opened with an independent auditor.

What it unlocked: Procurement reviews that used to stall on a data-location question now clear on the first pass.

How the division is organised

5 functions, each accountable for something specific

Each card states what that team owns when something goes wrong, which is the part of an org chart a buyer actually has a use for. We publish functions rather than biographies on purpose: headcount changes, and the accountability does not.

Executive Leadership

Division strategy, commercial commitments, and the claims on this site

Roadmap, pricing policy, audit scope, parent-company alignment

Every published figure, threshold, and compliance statement is signed off here. If this site claims something the platform cannot do, that is not a marketing error — it is an executive one.

Configuration Engineering

The constraint solver and the catalogue that feeds it

Constraint solving, catalogue compilation, deduction modelling, margin floors

If a published catalogue produces a cut list a shop floor cannot cut, it belongs to this team and to nobody else.

Field Ops Team

Dispatch, routing, and the technician app in the customer's hands

Offline sync core, dispatch optimisation, route sequencing, mobile reliability

Accountable for the app working in a basement, and for every sync conflict that reaches a human being a conflict that genuinely needed one.

Platform & Residency Engineering

The API surface, the edge deployment, and where the data physically sits

Edge deployment targets, versioned API, tenant isolation, Canadian data residency

Owns the claim that production data does not leave ca-central-1, which means owning every subprocessor decision that could make it untrue.

Enterprise Support Engineering

Implementation, price-book modelling, and the incident queue afterwards

Onboarding, ERP reconciliation, severity triage, escalation to on-call

Responsible for the first ninety days — the window in which an implementation either replaces the spreadsheet or quietly runs beside it — and for every severity clock published on /support.

Officer accountability

Four offices sign for the division. Each one states what it approves, so a procurement reviewer can address a question to the office that can actually answer it rather than to a general inbox.

Co-Founder & Chief Executive

Commercial commitments, pricing policy, and the parent-company relationship with Novel Blinds Inc.. Signs the master service agreement and every claim published on this site.

Co-Founder & Head of Product Engineering

The constraint solver, the catalogue compiler, and the offline sync core. Owns the release process and the decision to ship or hold.

Head of Platform & Data Residency

Tenant isolation, subprocessor approval, and the ca-central-1 residency commitment. Named counterparty for security questionnaires and audit scope.

Head of Enterprise Delivery

Implementation, ERP reconciliation, and the severity clocks. Named in the statement of work as the escalation owner for the first ninety days.

Note on this section: offices are published; individual biographies are not. Escalation reaches a named person the moment you have a contract — your implementation lead and on-call escalation path are named in the statement of work, not on a marketing page where they would be out of date within a quarter. To reach an office before that, write to sales@novelsystems.ca and name the one you want.

Coverage

Field coverage across 5 macro-regions

The platform deploys anywhere. This section is narrower and says so: it is where our own crews run, which is where the routing engine was calibrated. Drive times were modelled against dense-core service windows and 401-corridor congestion first, because that is where we were losing the hours. The regions are broken out so an operator can find their own corridor rather than read a continent-wide claim and wonder what it covers.

These are territories served, not locations we occupy. Delivery is remote-first — implementation, configuration, and support run over video and the API — with on-site attendance arranged per engagement.

Greater Toronto Area

The densest concentration of accounts, and the conditions routing was modelled against first: narrow delivery windows, booked loading docks, and drive times that bear no relation to straight-line distance. Most engagements that need someone on site get one soonest here.

Golden Horseshoe Region

The arc from Niagara through Hamilton and up around the lake — a high concentration of commercial manufacturing and building-products distribution, and the customer base whose price books carry the most tier and volume-break logic.

Southwestern Ontario Industrial Corridor

The 401 manufacturing belt running west to the border. Longer legs between stops and fewer crews to absorb a re-sequence, which is why re-optimisation mid-route matters more here than anywhere denser.

Eastern Ontario & Ottawa Valley Corridor

Ottawa and the corridor along the river, where a meaningful share of accounts carry public-sector procurement requirements — which is where the residency posture and the audit trail stop being a slide and start being a gate.

Central & Northern Ontario Distribution Nodes

Distribution points serving territory where a wasted trip costs a day rather than an hour. Coverage here is deliberately node-based and scheduled in advance; the platform is built so a technician can complete a full job with no connectivity at all.

Software has no service area — infrastructure does

Production runs in AWS ca-central-1 (Montréal), active-active across availability zones in the same region. No production record is stored or processed outside Canada. Deployment and support are remote across Canada; the regions above describe where a person can be scheduled to show up in a van.

How to reach us

Novel Systems
Enterprise cloud software · built in Canada
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

The platform is delivered as enterprise cloud software from Canadian infrastructure. Implementation, configuration, and support run remotely, with on-site API onboarding scheduled per engagement for trade operators across North America. Postal mail goes to the registered address on your order form.

(416) 555-0142

Corporate structure

Practically, that means Novel Blinds Inc. runs its own quoting and dispatch on this platform in production. A regression reaches its estimators before it reaches yours.

Come and argue with the numbers

Every figure on this site publishes its measurement conditions specifically so you can push back on it. The most productive first meeting is one where you do.

Book a technical session Read the architecture