As the year draws to a close, it’s a wonderful time to look back on what we’ve achieved in 2017. The best yardstick to measure ourselves against is the goals we set ourselves at the start of year.
If you were following our blog nearly 12 months ago, you might recall that we challenged ourselves to progress in six areas:
1) A Complete Focus on Configure Price Quote (CPQ)
2) Mid-size Organisation Packages
3) New Website
4) Global Reach (US, Far East, RoE)
5) Grow Our Team
6) Support Charities
Let’s take each of these in turn and see how we did.
A Complete Focus on CPQ
This year we doubled down on our CPQ focus. We worked hard to obtain resale rights for CPQ licenses from Oracle to complement our implementation services and our maintenance offerings too. We launched our Future-Proof CPQ solution for existing Oracle CPQ users to help them get the best from their system. We also partnered with another CPQ vendor – KBMax – who integrate wonderfully with Oracle CPQ and who also have their own standalone offering.
Mid-size Organisation Packages
This goal was slower to develop for us. We’ve shown we can provide cost-effective implementations for smaller organisations, but we’d struggle to say it was packaged. However, in the latter months of the year, we’ve formed a great partnership with BPI On Demand. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Fred and Mike must be blushing because were following in their footsteps and plan to launch a managed service offering for CPQ early in 2018. This will allow smaller organisations to reap the benefits of CPQ with no upfront costs.
New Website
We launched our new website in July, beautifully designed by InnerVisions ID and we’re really happy with the result. We’re continuing to evolve our brand and the resources we make publicly available through our web presence.
Global Reach
It’s been an exciting year for us outside of the UK. We’ve been busy delivering projects and implementations of CPQ in Israel, France, Qatar, Sweden and the Netherlands and have prospects in many more countries (and of course in addition to our clients in the UK). We’ve also expanded our sales and pre-sales coverage to give our customers, and the Oracle sales teams, the best support in Central & Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Look out for an even stronger presence in those countries from Walpole Partnership in 2018.
Grow Our Team
Our key appointment was Antoine Jansen who joined our team to give us sales coverage in many of the countries and regions mentioned above. Antoine brings a wealth of experience in CPQ, as well as a real burst of enthusiasm and professionalism. We’re very excited to have him on board. Our offshore team has grown in line with the projects were delivering and we expect to announce some further exciting additions to the team in 2018. In truth though, our success in 2017 has been down to the extra miles (and kilometres) our amazing team have gone for the business, and my thanks go to them all.
Support Charities
Our key charity, Kids In Sport, has continued to receive our financial support in 2017 and will continue to do so in 2018. The work that Roger and his team are doing to give children a chance to take part in sport when they otherwise wouldn’t be able is truly amazing and makes our hearts melt a little every time we hear about their good work. We were also very proud to support our COO Lisa Zevi, as she terrified herself doing a sky-dive in aid of the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.
So overall, we can consider 2017 a successful year. As we take stock over the holidays well be renewing some commitments, increasing others and perhaps adding some new ones into the mix for 2018, but until then, we’ll sit back with a large glass of something and consider 2017 a job well done.
Merry Christmas (or Happy Holidays) to you and yours and all the very best for 2018.
