by Alan Nelson
I promised last week, when reflecting on the year gone by, that I would share some thoughts on what 2009 has in store for us. I’m not normally one for crystal ball gazing, but it’s that time of year, when we inevitably look forward.
On the financial side, our year doesn’t end until March 31st. We generally know what we will working on for the next three months and have a pretty good idea of the following three and so we can already see that 2008/9 will be a good year for Nelson Croom. 2009/10 is coming together nicely as well and so we are cautiously optimistic about the future. I say this while touching several large pieces of wood, as I am sure everyone is doing right now. I am sure our business is not immune from a recession but our core markets of continuing professional development, compliance and distance learning are less likely to suffer than most and for some the switch to doing things online offers significant savings at a difficult time.
Technically I see us moving forwards in two directions over the next 12 months. Firstly, during the past year we have been incorporating more and more Web 2.0 facilities within our learning resources. These have been enthusiastically taken up by the communities of learners and in 2009 I see this becoming standard practice for the material we publish ourselves and a central part of many bespoke projects.
Perhaps less exciting, but no less important, we will continue to invest in the robustness of our system. During 2008 we had over 45,000 new registrations for courses, up 30% on the previous year. So we start the year with over 150,000 learners, and in 2009 I expect to add a further 60,000. That can’t happen without continual investment in the hardware, software and communications technology.
We have recently put plans in place to focus more resources on the development of our own courses. We already have a substantial publishing programme, but we aim to expand it significantly now that we have real experience of what the markets that we serve really want. Alongside this we will establish closer links with our partners and licensing organisations and to this end Rachel Bruce has agreed to take up the role of publisher, coordinating the development of new publishing and liaising with our partners to ensure they are get everything they need to provide an exciting service to their professional communities.
Finally, and perhaps best of all, is the prospect of all the new people I expect to meet in 2009. Last year saw us start to work with more new clients and partners than ever before and I expect that to be repeated, and indeed surpassed, in 2009. For me the best part of our work is meeting new people, finding out about their organisations, and thinking through how we can create a really compelling way of helping them to achieve their objectives. Some of these conversations lead us to exciting commercial possibilities and others are rewarding because of the obvious benefit they provide to their target audience. All offer us the privilege of a window into someone else’s world.
So hello to everyone that we haven’t yet worked with but will get to know in 2009. It will be good to meet you!
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