Is it really 2023 already? As we say goodbye to 2022, I would like to reflect and offer some insight into the internal world of Partner Software. The Partner team has continued to rise up to the challenges of running a small business in a fast-paced market. Our team has worked closely with our customers to understand challenges and frustrations. These challenges are not always simple and volume can sometimes be overwhelming. Each day, we look for ways to make our jobs easier so we can in turn, make our client’s jobs easier. Harris refers to this practice as Operational Excellence. OE is the art of improving 1% each day, every day. At the beginning of 2022, each department set specific goals and objectives around OE. The Partner leadership team led the charge on these improvements. Many of which are internal and not client facing but help us produce better results for our clients.
Jason Crandall is now leading our operations which spans most day-to-day business including R&D, PS and Support. Jason has continued to build a solid team of technicians. This year, we welcomed new members Wyatt McLoon, Megan Lowery, John-Paul Damante, Macy Khamsa and Nguyen Kaitlyn. It is refreshing to see the team grow and experience the fresh energy that new personalities bring to the table. Our internal training program is in full-swing and these employees are already producing great results!
One of the biggest focus items for the team has been improving customer response time on open tickets. Sloan Simpson, Doc McLoon and the Support team helped us improve our response time substantially in 2022. The team was able to reduce our average time to close by 76% compared to 2021, taking our close time from just over 11 days to under 3 days. Our monthly Closure rate never fell below 90% all year. James Bowdler has led the charge on nearly all ticket escalations including many service projects for our customers. James also worked with key customers to provide a FEMA solution to Damage Assessment simplifying the level of effort it takes for our customers to file for reimbursements after a storm event. This functionality has saved our customers both time and money and allowed them to recoup millions of dollars in relief at a quicker pace.
Field Design Implementations and project management continue to be a focus for our team. Looking back at the year, we did not track projects to the standards that were set in Q1 and this led to some frustrations for our clients. The team has stepped up to help remedy this situation and we are already seeing improvements with the details we are tracking for our implementations. We are experimenting with new project tracking software that has so far shown great results.
Client Success was a major goal for 2022. This goal is based around keeping customers in the loop to all of the new features and also understanding the pain-points and improvements we should be making. The Partner Sales team led by Johanna Gard’ner had meaningful conversations with 130 of our customers this year. We are on pace to speak with every Partner client before the year ends. Be on the lookout for a call from Liz Smith! We have held consistent quarterly Client Advisory Meetings. These meetings are an important aspect of our success. We show off new features and the product roadmap while our customers provide invaluable feedback. Please join us next week for the final meeting of 2022! Most importantly, we held our first in-person User Training event since 2019. Thank you to all of the customers who joined us in Athens this year! Our onsite training events have increased as-well. When was the last time Pete Lawless trained your crew? Let us know if you need a refresher!
We continue to make improvements to version 4.30 by following up on our promise to deliver 2 releases this year. Both releases (4.30.2 / 4.30.4) contain security patches, bug fixes and new features. Nearly 70 of our customers have taken this upgrade and are enjoying the newest functionality including 64-bit Java, Partner Dashboard, Staker Tools, Global Map View, File Fetch, Map Markers and Map Notes and beyond. Don’t get left behind dealing with older versions. Josh McMullen will work with you to make sure everything is properly tested in an off-line environment before going live with the new system. Upgrade today!
In the spirit of Operational Excellence, we are chipping away at our product roadmap. Thanks to Liam Filbig and Wyatt McLoon, our new Orbitas module is nearly complete so we are now setting our sights to 2023. In 2023, we will be working very closely with other Harris divisions to provide a bigger suite of modules and applications to our customers including OMS, SCADA, IVR, Customer Billing, Service/Work orders, Asset Management, Meter Data Management, Customer Engagement, Payment Kiosks, and beyond. Harris is unifying these solutions, many of which are top-notch when compared to the competition. In Q1, Partner will be working very closely with dataVoice to heavily integrate our solutions and provide robust Outage data to field crews. From there, we will be extending our integrations to the other Harris platforms. Matt Lee is already working closely with Harris BU’s to cross-sell applications. Please reach out if you want to see a demo!
I want to take the time to thank the Partner team for their hard work throughout the year. It is a blessing to work alongside each of the Partner employees. Mostly, I would like to thank all of our customers that make our jobs possible. 2022 marked my 10th year working for Partner and working with our great customers has been the constant fuel to keep me engaged. Thank you for continuing to support us and working with us to improve on all fronts. Have a restful holiday season. Stay safe and healthy!
Matthew Williams – Vice President