This week’s blog is from our CEO, Claire Revell, as she looks back on 2018. WOW, what a year we’ve had!
Good Morning and Happy Tuesday!
I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, to those who celebrated, and an early Happy Holidays to those who will be celebrating in a couple of weeks.
This past weekend I decided to get into the holiday spirit, put up the decorations and start wrapping some presents. Whilst doing so, I started to think back over 2018. It was the perfect chance to truly reflect and appreciate how much has been accomplished.
2018 was my first full calendar year of being CEO. I cannot express how fortunate I am to have such a remarkable team. Not only are they hard working and dedicated, they have been extremely receptive to change. New leadership can be challenging, but the team have understood my vision for a bigger, bolder, braver Team TutorPro and they’ve been incredibly supportive and 100% onboard. A favorite saying of mine is “The only constant is change”. I believe that change can be good and whilst too much change can cause disruption, I don’t feel that the team have felt that way and I hope that our Client Family Members haven’t either. The changes we have implemented were set out to help us achieve our goals, improve the solutions we are developing and the support we provide.
Ensuring that my team have access to the best tools for the job is key. Not only have we implemented new project management tools, both for the development and Client Success team, we have migrated from Zoho CRM to Salesforce CRM. We also changed from using a TutorPro developed support tool to Salesforce Service Cloud and most recently implemented Microsoft Teams, to improve the communication internally and externally. These are just some of the changes that have impacted all departments, and as a business we have seen an increase in productivity, efficiency, communication and collaboration.
Developing innovative, engaging and disruptive technology is what we are here to do! After no new product launches for six years, 2018 saw the launch of not one but two new products! TutorPro LMS V3 and TutorPro Athena, our performance support system. We launched the first release of Athena at ILTACON 2018 and took the lead developer Julian with us, another first for the business. It was a fantastic opportunity for him to meet our Client Family and to hear feedback directly. The new development tempo is all thanks to those who tap away in the Developers Cave at TutorPro HQ!
Christel, who was promoted to Head of Courseware back in April, has made some exciting improvements to our Courseware and Assessments. Not only has she rebranded the content to match our new modern, streamlined look but is now starting to embark upon the journey of creating Learner Job Aids and Instructor-Led Handouts, Audio and Accessibility. Shhhh don’t tell Christel I told you! We’ll be sharing all the details after the festive season.
We opened up a new office in Atlanta, and this year saw some goodbyes and hellos. In March we welcomed Xavier to the team, and a superb Support Specialist he is. In August we said goodbye to Dalene, who I have worked with for many years, and who was in fact a Client Family Member before she joined Team TP! After 5 years of telling me she was going to retire, she finally did, but 3 weeks later came back for some consulting work!
Shortly after Dalene retired, Ollie, our Marketing and Sales guru who had been with us for a couple of years said goodbye, but as a millennial we knew we couldn’t keep him forever! More recently Nikki and Julie joined the Atlanta office, both of whom are settling in well and I’m excited to have them join us on this journey.
Oh and along with all of this happening, how can I forget, we also fought the beast of GDPR, put together endless pieces of documentation and I somehow, found time to get married!! I cannot thank my husband, Jay, and our boys, Jerry and Aaron enough. They understand what the business and the team mean to me, and I couldn’t do it without them by my side.
It’s an honour and a privilege to work with the team, our Client Family and Business Partners. We have built some wonderful new relationships and continued on some exciting journeys with our Partners. All of which we are extremely grateful for. We have accomplished some astonishing goals this year, and I’m so excited to continue this exciting journey next year.
BRING ON 2019!!
