As the year draws to a close it’s time for our annual reflection on the last 12 months. So, did anything interesting happen in 2020?
Well, we started the year in great shape, visiting clients around the world (especially enjoying the one based near Mont Blanc in January!), bringing our team together from their far-flung locations to events like Oracle OpenWorld in the UK and smaller client events in Paris. Business was growing nicely and we were welcoming our new partners at Ben Consulting in France. We were just getting new projects started with old and new clients in February and March…
… and you know what happened next!
The devastating impact of Covid-19 has been well documented and while I’m so happy that Santa is bringing vaccines to the world this year, as we enter the festive season, we will take a long moment to reflect on the lives of those that haven’t made it through and many others whose lives have been hurt the most by the dreadful pandemic. Our thoughts and prayers go out to those in our team, to our friends, clients, partners and people the world over who have been affected, to give them the support they need as best we can.
From a business perspective it’s been a tough year to achieve all our goals and I am so immensely proud of our whole team who have come together. Tighter than ever. Better than ever. Our team spirit is strong and our ability to deliver for our clients has grown despite the unprecedented conditions.
Alex, Hayley, Ian, Ingmar, Pradeep and Stuart – I salute you for bringing the strongest personal leadership and the strongest core possible to our team. We would not be here without any one of you.
We were well versed in remote working before the rest of the world joined our Zoom party, but we moved out of our offices and into our homes. We learned about homeschooling, furloughing, social-distancing and lockdowns, and we helped each other through the challenges they created for each of us as individuals and I truly believe it’s made us a better team and a better organisation. We’ve cut out unnecessary things and become leaner and that will serve us well into the future as the situation continues to unfold.
I’m pleased this year that we’ve continued to grow our CPQ business and our team, and we have welcomed Hayley, Emeline, Dan, and Hatem and Radoine from the Ben Consulting team. Achal has also joined Prakash and Divya in our brilliant offshore team too.
We’ve also significantly grown our Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) practice, delivering great results for Netsuite’s Planning and Budgeting (NSPB) clients. Our offshore team, led by Soban and Raju under Stuart’s guidance, have delivered consistent quality solutions for clients who need the ability to plan and forecast multiple scenarios more than ever in the changing conditions of the world today.
We have CPQ and NSPB clients all around the world now – this year some have gone live with projects, some are improving their existing systems with our help and we have several implementations at every stage of the project lifecycle.
We’re almost ready to launch our new branding developed by my incomparable wife Sapna, and her team at InnerVisions ID, and Stuart and Alex have been instrumental in bringing that to life – our new website will be launching in Q1 2021 so look out for that as we reposition ourselves for continued growth.
And as ever we’ve been pleased to donate 1% of our revenues to charities. This year we’ve sponsored Alex to walk a ridiculous amount of miles in October for Sal’s Shoes, we’ve supported Movember, and Save the Children on Christmas Jumper Day.
2020 has been so hard for so many people. I am thankful we’ve all survived and despite challenges never seen before in my lifetime, in many ways we’ve thrived and have a lot to be proud of. I’m reminded at this time of a quote from Viktor Frankl’s famous book ‘Mans’ Search for Meaning’
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
I thank my whole team for choosing and showing their great attitudes and wish that everyone reading this has the Merriest Christmas that you possibly can in your own set of circumstances.
‘Looking Back at 2020’ was written by Walpole Partnership’s MD, Andy Pieroux.
