2022 and Looking Ahead
I must start with a heartfelt thank you to our brilliant customers for their support in this most unprecedented of years in the lifespan of our company. A special thanks to our long standing (dare I say long suffering!) customers with whom we have jointly effected so much positive change in our collective corner of the world. I’d also like to welcome the many new customers who joined the “iMovo family” in 2022. Your patience, adaptability and trust has been amazing!
We have just passed our 12 year mark as a company and its been a tremendous year of change and renewal for us as an organisation. The milestones and achievements in 2022 were numerous and I’ll attempt to pick out a few of them.
Starting with change – we are very much in the business of change. Change is at the heart of the growth of every organisation and is often the hardest task that business owners and leaders undertake.
This year saw the company embrace dramatic change in a relatively short time.
Back in January 2022, we ran an offsite workshop for the technology and projects group to discuss ideas and improvements we could make to our operations and to improve customer experience dramatically. This set an agenda for the following 11 months and the Technology and Projects group is quite different exiting 2022 than when it entered. The leadership structure changed, the leadership changed, new functions and roles came about which within the same year they were proposed, went live and were executing the role they were created for.
New terms came into our internal lexicon of vocabulary – such as PMO, Confluence, buddying, engineering and a fair few others to boot. The outcome of this was a stronger team, more organised and better geared to execute complex projects for our customers.
Change was not limited to our technology and projects team, it also filtered into our business development team, which brought about new roles such as that of the Sales Development Representative (SDR) as well as re-aligning our team to operate more fluidly and responsively. The team, whilst distributed across Malta and Portugal, is today a highly motivated and performing unit.
Harnessing the expertise, we have in the engineering areas to the creativity and drive of our business development team has brought about a sea change in the organisation and improved the way we help our customers.
One has to point out that there were key players who played a significant role in orchestrating all of this and amongst them are Sarah, who drove our change from a people perspective and helped people across the organisation transition from one role to another, Godwin who in the 7 months since he joined has enabled a lot of operational changes as well, in his capacity as CTO/COO. Joe leading the business development team, despite the shortage of resources, led his team to a very successful 2022.
Change also took other forms and its with great pleasure that I publicly announce the creation of a new advisory unit within iMovo, which is being led by Hadrian. One cannot talk about iMovo and not mention Hadrian. He has been the stalwart and my wingman right from the get-go. When we set out 12 years ago, we never imagined where we’d get to and the directions iMovo would take. He was the one that imposed “order” to the “chaos” that I wrought. His incredible customer skills and sense of humour made him a perfect foil to my foibles. Thank you, Hadrian, from the bottom of my heart. It’s been a hell of a ride.
Throughout the pandemic and the past year, our corporate brand continued to thrive when it could have taken a different direction altogether. Brand iMovo owes much to the hard work of our marketing team, who, day in day out, make us so very visible out on the ether. Thank you, Marguerite, Coresse and Mariana. Yours was a task and half, more so as you had to deal with the complexity of multiple markets and languages.
Taking a step back, one much also acknowledge directly our Portugal and Lebanon crews and the great richness in diversity they brought to the company. It took a pandemic and a hunch to start out and take the plunge and being a great believer in destiny, it’s been a lovely one, meeting and working with you all. Your contribution adds to the rich fabric of iMovo. Thank you.
So three countries, three timezones and eight nationalities – how does one keep it altogether?
The secret sauce has been our office manager, Sharon, the redoubtable lady, inveterate and unapologetic Arsenal fan , even when it was dangerous to be so ! Sharon’s hard work behind the scenes with virtually everyone in the company has been a boon. As a wise man once said, you are a good soul!
Our Partners
Since day 1, our relationship with our technology partners has been so very important. It’s been a huge pleasure working with all of them and they provide a very important part of the “stitching” in the fabric of iMovo. In our complex part of the world, it take a lot for our partners to adjust and work with companies like us , but some of them have been absolutely super. There are just too many people to mention but I will mention a few heroes – those who I miss out , I must ask for your forgiveness for this very human failing memory – so here’s a shout out to some of the incredible people – Frankie, Jean, Owen, Maria M, Sebastien, Gisell, Caroline, Michael, Sinan, Jean Pierre, Albert M – thank you guys, to you and your teams.
So, in conclusion 2022 has been a fantastic year, including the performance, it’s been a record year for iMovo and we are well on track to achieving our vision 2025. Our KPIs and health indicators are all largely pointing in the same direction – due north. We look forward to expanding into new areas of services, advisory and technology in 2023. We have put together a plan over the past 4 months, which puts us at a high state of readiness for the challenges ahead. Some of those challenges are new ones we have set ourselves and this includes our entry into another market, which is Cyprus. We have already established customers there, but 2023 will see us more visible on the ground and we really look forward to making our current and future customers successful as well as helping our partners to achieve their goals too.
I wish you all, whether employees, customers and partners as well as the iMovo board of directors a great Christmas and peaceful start to the new year.
Pierre