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Happy 2015!
The start of each new year provides an opportunity to look back, to review what went well and identify how we can sharpen our focus. Doing so provides greater clarity for what’s most important, and it also serves as a catalyst to rev up our energy and enthusiasm for what’s to come. Looking back, 2014 was nothing short of a phenomenal year. We had the best year in MicroEdge history, in terms of growth, client retention and satisfaction.
What contributed to our success? More and more organizations are choosing our cloud-based solutions as the go-forward platform to manage their philanthropic programs, and the move to these solutions is happening at a much faster rate than we envisioned. Clients are expanding the capabilities of their systems by implementing value-added components to effectively support their organizational objectives. Our overall client satisfaction is at an all-time high. In 2014, 98% of our clients told us that they are satisfied or very satisfied with the quality of technical support they receive, and our Product team made significant strides in our efforts to deliver high quality, dependable releases. Across the MicroEdge team, we’re incredibly excited to build on our 2014 success and to serve you even better in 2015.
With that, I’m thankful to each and every one of our clients for choosing MicroEdge as their technology partner, and I’m grateful to lead such a first-rate organization and team.
From an integration perspective, the acquisition is going well. While we are working with our Blackbaud colleagues every day, we get together each month to share updates across the Blackbaud/MicroEdge integration teams. This gives us a big picture view of how we’re doing – what’s moving forward, where we need to make decisions or collaborate across teams, and whether we’re on track with our priorities and objectives. These updates occur in the latter half of each month, and so I will be shifting the timing of my monthly communication to the end of each month to follow these meetings. That way, you’ll be hearing the most recent and up-to-date news. This month, I wanted to briefly touch on two key initiatives that are in progress.
We are aligning our organization to better
support you.
Last year, we re-organized Product Management and Development into more vertically focused teams, such as Corporate; Independent and Family Foundation; and Community Foundations. In 2015, our account management team will follow their lead. Why? So we can be our very best for you. Our team knows that, for example, a community foundation is very different than a corporation, and as such, has different goals and objectives, and a different set of needs. By aligning our account management team in this manner, they will have a dedicated and singular focus on serving you and your organization’s needs. Our teams will be able to dig deeper into your work and needs, facilitate closer connections and collaboration with other organizations like yours, and provide more meaningful feedback on product direction, client sentiment and market dynamics to our counterparts that are driving our technology forward. This transition will occur over time throughout 2015, and as we make these changes, we will keep you informed.
Our Community Foundation product strategy
is underway.
We’ve told you with absolute certainty that we will continue to support both our MicroEdge and Blackbaud products for community foundations, and we’ve also shared our vision to build a “best of both worlds” solution that adds and expands the value you can derive from our partnership. Over the past month, we have been working together across the Blackbaud and MicroEdge product and development teams to gain a shared view and understanding of each solution’s feature set. We’ve mapped this out for FIMS and Financial Edge, and we have a market needs survey and assessment in motion. We are rolling this survey out in stages to our MicroEdge and Blackbaud clients – if you receive it, please help us by participating. Your voice and views are vital to our shared success. As we wrap up this phase of the plan in the first quarter, we’ll share insights and recommendations with you. We have also started to look at other MicroEdge / Blackbaud solutions that serve the community foundation market, such as the FIMS and Raiser’s Edge, and we’ll be conducting corresponding market assessments to understand the desire and need for integrating these solutions. Stay tuned for updates on these interesting and exciting explorations.
There’s a lot of amazing work underway in 2015 that will benefit you, much more than I’ve covered here. Keep reading these notes for timely updates, and share your thoughts on how we can most effectively converse with you. I’m looking forward to the incredible journey we will take together in 2015, and to your ongoing engagement and participation in helping shape our direction.
Best,
Kris |
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