Having 2020 vision
January 2, 2020
A brief look at the strategic focus of Global Mediator for the upcoming year
20/20 vision does not mean having “perfect vision”, just that the optometrist is testing how well your eyes can see an object at a distance of 20 feet. Similarly, on the first days of 2020, we are both looking back on 2019 and forward to 2020, which is not really perfect vision.
With our final movements made last year in mind, we are looking back to a year that was a little like Christmas, where we bit off slightly more than we could chew and we are still digesting some of our numerous initiatives. Even so, we are looking forward to a year of equal ambition and many more initiatives with a healthy appetite.
We continued strengthening our service offerings
As Global Mediator we continued evolving from an organization with a pure ERP focus to a more multifaceted organization. We have added a strong .net and web component that enable us to modify the user interface of business application in HTML 5, called UI Builder for Business Central. The initial feedback has been so positive that we had the chance to sponsor NAV TechDays 2019.
On the basis of a solid product development experience, we have built a praxis of QA-as-a-service where we support our customers with different services, one of which is automated regression testing. With a move to more frequent updates on cloud-based solutions, this has become a priority for some of our customers.
Last but not least, we have built a solid group around RPA, Microsoft Power Platform and Python in order to accommodate our customer’s needs in regard to process automation. From this, we have started delivering our first PowerApps connected to Business Central.
We grew – again!
In 2019, we were awarded the Gazelle award for growth by the Danish business newspaper Børsen for the second year running – this places us among the 0.15% of 700.000 companies in Denmark to do so. Our focus on steady growth meant that in 2019 alone our team grew by close to +20 bright people.
“Only around 1.000 out of 700.000 registered businesses in Denmark become Gazelle growth companies two years in a row. For Global Mediator to have the trust of our customers to enable us to be in this elite group of companies is extremely motivating.”
– Christian Holst-Jensen, CEO at Global Mediator
Gazelle Reception by Børsen this year
The reason we value growth is that it enables us to improve on our services to our customers as we can better share knowledge and work with new technologies. It also allows us to build a more stable business with higher job security for our people. The reality is, we are not just getting bigger; we are also getting better and have the capacity to become more future compliant.
Still – we keep it steady!
As a software engineering company focused on financial teams, we stay true to our customer base and constantly seek to find better solutions. This includes our own ability to deliver and improve – for those who have tried transforming a smaller organization into a bigger one, we can attest that this is hard, but rewarding work.
“As a company, we have our strength in compliance, legacy and data. Around that, we are now building products and services in automation, AI, UI and QA. Steadily improving while building new capabilities is our key focus.”
– Nicolai Krarup, COO at Global Mediator
During 2019 we expanded our Quality Assurance, Marketing, HR, Finance and IT Security teams. As you may have seen from our marketing efforts, we have worked diligently with these areas and as a result, we now resell testing software and we are a couple of months away from getting ISO 27001 certified. At times it felt as if we did too much at once, but we felt that these enhancements were needed to support our activities in 2020.
Strategic focus to grow
We constantly look for inspiration for where future technologies might take us. However, as a company, we have our strength in compliance, legacy and data – around that we are now building products and services in automation, AI, UI and QA. Steadily improving while building new capabilities is our key focus for 2020.
Our focus areas (apart from ERP | Dynamics) are also clearly defined; a continued push on data management will force us to strengthen our services around machine learning. At the same time, we will need to have a dedicated focus on rolling-out UI Builder for Business Central, expanding our QA service around automated regression testing and continuing to build our automation praxis with a special focus towards Microsoft Power Platform.
Keeping up the momentum
We have a pretty good feeling that we will become a Gazelle growth company again in 2020, but we will have to perform focused work to achieve it in 2021. We would like to achieve this, and it is not (only) because we are greedy. Rather, having steady growth as a focus forces us to make decisions that can drive the organization forward – and, we believe that the improvements and opportunities this focus brings is good for our people and good for our customers.
This realization that the more things change, the more they stay the same, makes our New Year resolution simple; we need to keep doing more of what we have been doing for the past couple of years. The only really new ambition we have is to improve upon how we do it compared to last year. What are your plans?
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