The 2018 merger brought together two companies that had a lot of work to do on their respective products. Eventually, we made the decision to build a third product that incorporates all of the value of the previous two but delivers it in a way that makes more sense for our clients. In the months that followed, our team has worked tirelessly to rethink our entire approach in a process that began with listening to and observing our clients to ensure that we remain hyper-focused on addressing root causes instead of just slapping band-aids on the effects. Ultimately, we began challenging everything we had already built, our own mission and model, as well as the alternative solutions being offered in our space. We broke the business down to its smallest elements in order to more effectively attack its biggest problems. 

Here’s how we’re responding to what we learned:‍

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‍We have to expand our coverage and deepen our commitment to being software-first in order to create the type of impact that changes the current landscape. When most of the players in this space are service-heavy organizations, it creates a gravitational pull to mirror their offerings and accept the expectations that they have set as our own, but we know we can do better. We owe it to our clients to challenge that dynamic and future-proof our business by expanding our offering to deliver comprehensive omnichannel coverage. This requires building a powerful, scalable platform that dispels the myth that speed and quality are mutually exclusive.

We have to make data contextual and actionable for every experience level. Despite all the positioning, there is an astonishing lack of data being used in the decisioning process. It’s not that people don’t want to use facts to inform their decision-making, there is just a severe disconnect in the way in which those facts are being presented (i.e. 100-page decks and crowded dashboards). Investing in ways to contextually visualize data, benchmark performance, and easily distribute key takeaways is how organizational muscle is built.
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We have to be transparent with our methods and build around a common language. The industry has been conditioned to accept undisclosed and secret proprietary methodologies. This lack of transparency creates drag and distrust in partnership discussions, as does the usage of bespoke, undefined terminology. People have to understand what they’re looking at in order to apply it to their day-to-day business.

We have to make it easy for people to integrate our solutions into their existing workflows. Our goal is to make our clients more efficient and give them back time in their day through the use of our solutions. This means we’re building with the intention of removing steps from our clients’ respective processes, which includes making our data more available for applications that exist outside of our platform.  

We have to continuously enhance the strategic elements of our client experience and follow through on being a true, proactive extension of their team. We refuse to be just another bi-weekly call on our client’s calendars. In order to achieve this, we will continue to build our team by drawing experienced, superior talent from the domains we operate within so that we’re steering our clients down known strategic paths to success.

Our commitment to the above is grounded in the belief that solutions in this space can and should be so much better. Differentiation is the byproduct of innovation and breaking away from the norm. A prerequisite to innovation is creating a safe environment to explore new ideas and we look forward to collaborating with our client community and strategic partners to advance our mission, with continuous rollouts of new solutions and features planned for the remainder of 2020.
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Brian Foley
President & Chief Revenue Officer