Bob Garcia, our CEO, reflects on the past year

What a mixture of feelings this year. We started the year with Covid restrictions. My family managed to avoid Covid through the whole pandemic only to have both our Christmas and a half-term holiday scuppered by different family members with positive tests.  A small price to pay. We are all healthy now and luckier than many. And the restrictions that we endured over the last years seem to be a thing of the past.

There was quite a bit of sadness this year. Who could think that in 2022 we would see war in Europe? The stories from Ukraine are heartbreaking. Inflation has been biting everyone, there isn’t a person or a business that I’ve spoken with that doesn’t feel some economic impact and the news is that this is going to continue into next year. Here in the UK, we decided to play musical prime ministers.  If you blink you might have missed a soon-to-be ex-prime minister headed for Buckingham Palace to hand over the keys!

There was no bigger story than the death of Queen Elizabeth II. What an amazing life of service. I’ve lived in England for 27 years now. I’ve never known anything but Elizabeth’s England. It’s going to take some time to get accustomed to singing God save the King. When the queen died, the outpouring of affection was really something to behold. Across the world, people were glued to their TVs. Witnessing that amazing ceremony is something I will never forget as we laid a truly selfless leader to rest.  

Sometimes the worst things bring out the best in people. When the war in Ukraine started our team in Slovakia jumped into action. Providing meals and a welcome to refugees fleeing the violence day after day. I’m so very impressed by our team’s desire to help in a time of need.

All of that writing doesn’t leave me much time to speak about the business and the marketing department won’t be impressed if don’t make use of this space!!

It’s been a great year. If you are familiar with us, you know that we provide a Managed Service for Teams Voice customers. We focus on the complexity in their environments, for example, contact centres, Teams meeting rooms, call queues analogue lines and other on-prem integrations. Following the pandemic, there is a huge appetite to transform these parts of businesses and it helps customers save money which is critical given the economic headwinds.

We work with so many great customers. And now that travel is back on the agenda, we are having customers visit the support centre in Kosice again. What a joy for customers to see first-hand, the talent and dedication of the team. Plus, our team gets to hear first-hand how our services support their business. It’s wonderful to make those connections.

Our specialist Power Platform development team has been building some amazing applications for customers who have moved to Teams Voice but need help managing their environment. We have apps for managing almost any area of your team’s voice environment, such as gaps managing phone numbers & voice policy, call queues & Auto Attendants or reporting on voice quality.

So now it’s time for Christmas parties and some well-deserved time off. Let’s hope that there is better news going into next year and that when things get hard, we face it together – because we are always better that way.

Happy Holidays Everyone and a Very Happy and Healthy New Year.

Bob