A Year of Tremendous Growth.
In 2019, we were incredibly fortunate to grow our client relationships, be involved with some landmark deals and have a lot of fun along the way. Looking back, this is a year we’ll likely remember for the unbelievable amount of growth we experienced.
Looking around the office in December of 2018 vs. December 2019 is a dramatic change. First off, you have to specify which office you’re even looking around! A year ago, we only had one. Secondly, you’ll see a ton of new faces – 21 to be exact.
A lot has changed in the past year, so we thought we’d take a moment to pause and reflect on a couple highlights of our growth in 2019.
21 New Hires
This year we were extremely lucky to add 21 critical new members to our growing team.
On the MGMT3D team, we added Jason Aune, Jordan Daniel, Simon Hoey-Burns, Nick Kleppe, Derek Lydon, Adil Najmuddin, Eric O’Neil, Tyler Norgren, James Pelnarsh, Ryan Petersen, Gaurav Shroff, Casey Steele, Vince Thao, Tim Turensek and Jessica Wink.
On the EBM Software team, we added: Mike DeBoer, Aaron Grossman, John Hanson, Brett MacDonald, Travis Puppe and Chris Sandberg.
Each and every member has proven to be a critical piece of the puzzle for both teams. We like to think we hire the best people in the industry, and looking back at all of the critical pieces we’ve added this year really reinforces that belief.
Chicago Office Opening & Minneapolis Office Expansion
Another huge change this year was our offices. In the first quarter, we opened a second office in addition to our Minneapolis home base. Located in the heart of downtown Chicago, the new office gave us more proximity to some of our biggest clients, and physical presence in a market with high growth potential for us.
Back in Minneapolis, our offices were growing too. While we had been occupying half of the 21st floor for some time, we decided, given our rate of growth, now was a good time to take over the entire floor. The buildout lasted several months, but by July 10th, we were all settling into new office spaces and enjoying our new view out of the western half of the 21st floor.
Catalyst & MGMT3D Get a Facelift
Over the course of the last 15 months, we’ve built an in-house marketing team from the ground up. One of their first major initiatives was to completely overhaul the branding and website for our Catalyst software.
The team redesigned the logo, look, feel, messaging, strategy and website to better position our product in the market and better educate potential customers on what the software is capable of doing. The team also launched organic and paid campaigns for the product, email marketing, sales collateral and more.
In a more recent effort, the marketing team completely overhauled the MGMT3D website, updating it with a fresh new look and feel that just launched this week. If you haven’t had the chance to see it yet, give it a look!
Catalyst Software & Implementation Improvements
Another huge component of our efforts for Catalyst this year was the definition of our FASTR™ process. The process is a best-in-class implementation plan that takes customers from signed contract to having Catalyst fully implemented throughout the organization in 8 weeks or less.
Our team worked tirelessly to establish the standards and best practices behind FASTER, because when we make a promise, we want to ensure it’s one we can deliver every time.
Among the other many improvements to Catalyst, the Material Cost Planning tool was introduced as was embedded Microsoft Power BI – greatly improving the ease of creating dashboards and visualizations with Catalyst.
Of course, this is just a brief overview of some of the biggest landmark moments in our growth for 2019. There is so much more to the story and so many great memories to go with it.
We would like to say thank you to all of our clients and partners for a truly fantastic year. From our family to yours, have a happy and safe holiday season.