Wow, what a crazy year this has been!  2021 has been pretty intense as we navigated our way through home-schooling challenges, staff illness and project stops and starts due to nonprofits facing their own battles.  But it has also been one of the most rewarding and successful as I reflect on the year for this annual blog.  I have picked out some highlights to share before I finish for some R & R (which here means Reindeer Malteasers and Rioja).  I would like to say THANK YOU to all of my team at Hyphen8 each and every one of whom contributes to our achievements.

We continue to grow our team

In the last 12 months we have added 12 people to our team.  We have re-structured and created new roles including a Customer Success Manager, two dedicated Delivery Managers and a new Head of Support.  Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to meet up in person to celebrate the fantastic year that we have had but as usual we put in a good effort with our virtual Christmas party.  One thing we are delighted about is that the gender split in our team is now 50/50% female/ male and we have welcomed a number of new staff representing diverse nationalities and ethnic backgrounds.

We are supporting many new customers

I am extremely proud of the variety of nonprofit organisations that we work in partnership with and we have been chosen by over 30 new customers this year.  

• Our talented delivery team kicked off our largest Salesforce implementation project ever and we have delivered many smaller projects to help teams to benefit from the flexibility of Salesforce
• Our fantastic evolve support team has seen an increase in demand (and consequently team size) of over 20% and we will soon be joined by a new Head of Support who will continue to shape and grow the team
• Our fabulous service design team was selected to provide guidance on service improvement by nonprofits wanting to improve the experience of the people that engage with them, their web presence and their ability to measure impact

Our Service Design practice is growing

In 2020 we launched our new Service Design practice to help nonprofits transform the way they work to improve the experience of those that engage with them.  We now have five experienced designers who all join us directly from key roles in nonprofits.  This year we have helped several organisations and the team have run a fabulous series of webinars to share knowledge and tips.  During the summer, we offered pro bono time for customers to focus on enhancing their impact evaluation and as a result have helped Cycling Scotland and Halifax Foundation for Northern Ireland to increase efficiency and visibility of the fantastic work that they do.

Our own well-being has never been more important

With all the global challenges of the last 2 years, the well-being of our team has been a top priority this year.  In addition to our ongoing well-being initiatives which include a monthly well-being allowance, flexibility of working hours to accommodate childcare, we reduced our weekly working hours to give everyone Friday afternoon off during the Summer months and monthly during the Winter months.  We plan to continue this next year and to continue to find innovative ways to encourage a work / life balance.

The Funders Collaboration Group was launched

It has been a dream of mine for some time now to find a way to bring all of the amazing UK funders that we are privileged to support together.  This year we launched our Funders Collaboration Group which now has over 25 members.   The aim is to enable funders using Salesforce to share best practice, discuss common challenges and collaborate to learn from each other.  We have only had a couple of sessions so far but will be encouraging group input to plan an exciting agenda for the New Year. 

We boosted our Salesforce partner rating

Meeting the expectations of our customers as a trusted Salesforce implementation partner is important to us.  Our personal development plans with each member of staff allow them to find time to work on certifications to maintain our platform knowledge.  We are extremely proud of our customer satisfaction rating which is currently 4.9 out of 5 and we have reached the top level of expert ratings in our chosen specialism which is grant management.  Salesforce rank consulting partners in four tiers based on our Trailblazer score which measures our contribution to targets across customer success, innovation growth and lead.  Just in the last couple of weeks we have achieved Summit status which is the highest tier.  In Q3 we were delighted to win the Customer Impact story of the quarter for our transformational project with Local Trust.

Success means we can make a difference

One of our key values (and one of the main reasons I am so passionate about what we do) is to make a difference to nonprofit communities.  Our aim is to generate sufficient profit to enable us to make charitable donations and give away pro bono time and dedicate time to building innovative solutions that will benefit nonprofits.  So far this year, we have given a significant amount of pro bono time to 12 organisations, make donations to four charities with causes to support women voted for by staff and have added to our range of Salesforce solution accelerators.  As next year is our 10 year anniversary (eek how did that happen?) we are making big plans to contribute to our social mission.

I would like to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas and hope we can look forward to a healthy and successful New Year.