by Alan Nelson
At this time of year we inevitably take stock, looking back at the year gone by and forward to the year to come.
2008 was good to Nelson Croom. Firstly on the financial side, revenues grew year on year by over 20%, creating a profit that we will reinvest in the development of the business. The performance was consistent too: all four quarters were profitable in their own right and generated cash, creating something of a war chest for the future.
On the technology side, the functionality of Imago continued to evolve. In particular we developed, in partnership with the Pensions Management Institute, facilities to enable students on distance learning courses to submit assignments and notify their tutors that they are ready to be marked.
The system ends the year more robust as well. A new generation of hackers, targeting specifically ASP systems with SQL Server back ends like ours, was successfully repelled. We have invested in new state of the art hardware with different parts of Imago now running on separate parallel servers. Crucially the software engine has also been updated to SQL Server 2008, which will increase speed and facilitate quicker development of new functionality.
The new capacity created by the upgrades is timely – we now have over 4000 learners a month registering for our courses. Whether they are studying for professional exams, completing compliance programmes or maintaining their professional knowledge through CPD courses, all have come to expect a quick and reliable service that is easy to use and which can be relied upon to store their critical data.
On the publishing side, we continued to expand our range of white label CPD courses. 2008 saw our courses offered to the members of a dozen new partner bodies, expanding the range of participants in the publishing project and creating an ever more robust publishing model.
Our client list expanded too, with more new relationships than ever before. We now have unparalleled experience of working with professional bodies and a real critical mass of projects in financial services, health, law and the third sector. Projects with organisations as diverse as the British Library, FP Advance and the Institute of Fundraising have all forced us to come up with new solutions for learning design. I have been particularly pleased with the development team’s ability to be creative and maintain consistently high standards when under pressure of workload.
All this was borne out towards the end of the year, as we conducted a survey of our clients and partners. We asked people to grade us between 1 (very bad) to 5 (very good) on all aspects of our service, from initial conversations through development to ongoing support, as well as on how well our technology meets their needs. Some specific scores were outstanding, but more important was that we scored over 4 on every question. I was particularly pleased to see that 100% of respondents would recommend us.
So 2008 was good. We can justifiably claim that the success of the company is based on the high standards of service we have achieved in all aspects of what we do, which bodes well for the future.
So what about 2009? How do we plan to cope with the ever expanding number of users of our system? What new opportunities will emerge for providers of professional development services? What will the economic downturn mean? I will be back on the blog in the next few days to look forwards at the year to come.
Comments