Here at Bi101, we’re dedicated to helping our customers use the cloud to remove IT headaches and improve their businesses. We want our customers to shed themselves of time-consuming technology hurdles so that their people can work on more critical tasks that build revenue.

We’re not all that different, and, as we say, we like to “drink our own champagne.” When it comes to our own operations, efficiency, and utilization, 2016 has been a big year. Here are some of the biggest changes.

We’re focusing on software and professional services companies

Our wonderful current customers do all sorts of amazing work—from software companies to wineries to garden stores to to manufacturers to professional services companies—but this year, we realized that in order to truly focus our efforts and be the best resource possible, we needed to focus on just a few verticals. Being in the Bay Area, we’re surrounded by software and professional services companies, and we know their businesses through and through. It just made sense.

By focusing on these two verticals, we’re aiming to become subject matter experts who can guide our customers through best practices about the particular nuances that make their businesses challenging.

We doubled down on NetSuite

NetSuite remains the bread and butter of our business, and we wanted our customers to feel that commitment to helping them control their finances.

We already have sales and support staff dedicated to helping our NetSuite customers, but we felt like we needed a guiding force to ensure we were tackling all the NetSuite-related issues as a coordinated front. We hired Tony Elwood, who is taking on the role of Bi101’s ERP sales manager. He brings 22 years in technology sales to the team, plus 15 years of selling finance, accounting, and ERP software. He’s going to pull together all our efforts to ensure we’re delivering a consistent, top-tier experience to all our customers, and we’re excited to see what happens next.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be producing more content that tackles some of the biggest financial topics for the coming year, such as revenue recognition and ASC 606. Speaking of the blog…

The blog is back

In the past, our blog was a go-to resource for information about the differences between different versions of Microsoft Office 365 and details about revenue recognition models. We admit that we let it atrophy after some time, but it’s back. We want this to be a place where we both kick around ideas and do deep-diving analysis of industry trends and regulations. A little fun, a little serious, but very informative. In 2017, we’ll be doing even more, particularly around the issues that are most pertinent for software and professional services companies.

We strengthened our relationships with our partners

Our customers are the core of our business, but our partners are what makes everything function. At the beginning of 2016, we committed to working with our three primary partners—NetSuite, Google, and Microsoft—to learn more about their platforms directly from them. We knew we could translate that new information and new energy into a better experience for our customers.

We attended the G Suite Partner Event, held at Google Tech Corners, where we met with leaders within Google’s cloud product offerings to learn about data migration, next-level security, and machine learning.

We went to Microsoft SMB Live Training help our key staff better understand how to get customers doing more on Office 365. At the latest Microsoft Partner Briefing—an exclusive event between Microsoft and its top partners—we talked upcoming product rollouts, new functions, and shared client successes. On top of all that, we gained a Microsoft Partner Gold Cloud Productivity competency.

We built a new web experience

Most of our potential and current customer interact with our website on a regular basis, whether that’s investigating which cloud collaboration suite they want to invest in, or filing a support ticket. In order to better showcase our opportunities and streamline workflows, we developed a brand-new website—one that we’re really proud of.

On top of having a more modern, streamlined design, the new website has given us a platform to do more with fewer hours. We know that utilization is a big concern for our customers, and we’re no different. Now, our key people can devote more of their time to other tasks rather that fighting fires online.

That’s it?

There’s more, of course. Lots of little things that might not be immediately recognizable. We’ve changed a lot in the last year, and hope to make the same innovative leaps in 2017. See you all on the other side!