2016 Review – a great year at Skore
2016 has been quite a year for us and now we’re reflecting on the last 12 months and thinking about how we can continue our success into 2017.
2016 is the year we turned a profit, not only are we in profit but it’s also the year we invested the most in the business.
Our financial year doesn’t end for a few months yet but we are well on target with a number of exciting projects already committed for the New Year.
Among the key changes to the business is the consolidation of all our businesses into one. We originally setup Skore Labs as a separate business alongside our existing services company. As the aims of these businesses have aligned bringing them together under one unit will make it much easier to operate and grow.
Highlights of 2016
Product development
This was a big year for the product. The desktop app really matured at the end of 2015 so we went into 2016 with the tool as a core part of our service offering. This made a real difference to both sides of what we do and meant a lot more hands on with the product allowed us to really refine how it supports consultants and analysts.
We have received a lot of great feedback on the new interface and the increasing stability of the rapid process discovery interface.
We also released our first cloud offering, starting in beta back in June. Although we didn’t officially announce an end to the beta until December we had a number of customers already using the platform day-to-day.
The web version is fully compatible with the desktop meaning content can be easily exchanged between the two allowing for online and offline editing.
On top of the desktop capability, the web app supports version history, contains an audit trail and usage stats. And of course you can set up users and share content securely.
New Customers
This year our new customers have really come from every corner of industry, from healthcare to horticulture. We have projects running at one of the UK’s largest NHS trusts as well as a major healthcare provider in the USA.
Software companies continue to be a key customer for us and this year we can include Learnsmarter and Highlight as well as a number of other UK based tech companies.
In the USA we have partnered with one of the country’s largest banks as a new and growing user with particular interest in our ability to support internal audits. Audits have also been a theme in fast moving consumer goods.
We have been involved in a number of projects in engineering and construction working closely with a national home builder and a major infrastructure project, both in the UK. Our design methodology and tools have also been used to support an engineering organisation in the USA.
Finally we have been working with two companies in the horticultural industry on both sides of the Atlantic. We hope both of those will continue strongly into the New Year!
We’d like to thanks to all the customers and partners that have supported us in 2016, we hope we didn’t miss too many from here, especially all the hard working consultants and analysts using Skore app everyday. We really couldn’t continue to develop without your feedback and support!
Key Partnerships
This year we established a number of key partnerships that have supported our success in different ways.
Dorset Creative – A massive thank you to Nathan and his team for supporting our product development and providing valuable guidance, design and development resources.
Springboard IT – Supported us understanding Sharepoint and how to integrate Skore app into the Sharepoint ecosystem.
A2ZCloud – This exciting company work with customers to deliver cloud solutions on the Zoho platform. They have been very supportive throughout 2016 and we really look forward to working with them even more in 2017.
Roc Technologies – One of the fastest growing tech companies in 2016. The award winning team at Roc deliver process transformation, project management and technology expertise to major change programmes.
We are currently in discussion with a number of new partners and hope to announce and develop those over 2017. Please do get in contact if you would like to become a partner [email protected].
Looking to 2017
Over the past few weeks we’ve been trying to find time to start planning for next year.
The team
It’s amazing we’ve managed to achieve what we have with the team we have and we’re very proud. While we have money in the bank and a strong pipeline it’s the ideal time to start growing.
We are currently in discussions to recruit some key new team members and will be on the lookout for talent throughout the year. If you think you could be a valuable addition, get in touch [email protected].
The product
Development continues and we have a few exciting new features in test at the moment and due for release early in the New Year. These include; commenting on processes, approval and publishing.
Beyond this we’re continuing to work on the interface and existing users will notice a number of improvements starting to appear toward the second quarter. We have a lot of exciting ideas but as usual we are not investing too much in those until proven in existing projects.
If you have any ideas, and a project to try them on, do get in contact. [email protected]
New offerings
Perhaps the most exciting thing for us is something we’ve been working on throughout 2016. We have been formalising many of the tools we use in our consulting and building these into a tool kit.
We plan to make this available to customers and partners sometime next year. We will be inviting people to review, comment and try these tools out for themselves. We’re not sure exactly where this will take us so we’re looking to you for guidance.
If you’d like access to a set of consulting, analysis and project tools to support your existing work then get in touch to register your interest. [email protected]
And on that note we wish you all the very best and a prosperous 2017!