This Is Solver: Recapping 2017 and Looking Ahead to 2018
This blog entry will discuss the achievements Solver is most proud of in 2017 – and what to look forward to from the team in 2018.
Last week, Solver hosted its annual white elephant gift exchange and holiday party. Lots of laughter, plenty of interesting gifts, and a chance for this casual workplace to get dressed up and have fun outside the hijinks that go on in the office. But it also was a very simple reminder that we are at the end of the year. There’s enough to do to finish Q4 and 2017 strong, but just for me personally, I know that, because our holiday festivities with our work family have concluded, it feels a little bittersweet. Another year in the books, while there’s plenty to look forward to in 2018. I’m excited to fly home and spend some time with my family, but before I do that, this article is going to discuss what Solver has been able to achieve in 2017 and what you can expect from the BI360 team in 2018.
It feels almost trite to say that 2017 was one for the history books. I could perhaps go further and say that it has been a tough year, what with political shifts, culture clashes, and a question mark in terms of how the economy will fare. However, Solver is in business to help other businesses – and that’s an important role. More specifically, no matter how turbulent the market is – and your specific industry – the importance of a powerful, accessible, and dynamic toolbox of corporate performance management solutions cannot be stressed enough. And in today’s enterprise software landscape, you’re most likely managing both cloud and on-premise products, which is a great segue to what Solver has been up to in the past year.
Solver’s CEO, Nils Rasmussen, has historically landed on a phrase or mantra that has guided the Solver team throughout the year, with Year of Learning or Year of the Partner as examples. This year has definitely been the Year of the Cloud – and 2018 could easily be a continuation of that as there’s no denying the arrival and new era of cloud technologies. However, time will tell – and we’ll have to check in with Nils. But he has bigger fish to fry.
In addition to ushering organizations to the cloud, the Solver team is always looking to expand the power of BI360 with new Solver locations. In 2017, Solver Brazil and Solver Benelux launched, as well as an exclusive partnership with BIAPRO to distribute in the Iberic region for companies in Spain and Portugal who are looking to achieve modern, dynamic, and powerful analytics and planning capabilities. It has been exciting to see these new companies land their first deals and make their way into key marketplaces around the globe with the help of expanding reselling partner networks – and it’s especially thrilling when this expanding Solver family gets together to riff off each other’s creativity and innovation.
Sometimes, different offices come to the Los Angeles headquarters for training or strategic summits, but one of the largest gatherings is always the annual BI360 user conference, Focus, which took place August 21-24, 2017 in La Jolla, California on the world-famous golf course, Torrey Pines. This year was the 5th edition of this hands-on learning and networking experience – with record attendance and a real sense of actionable exchanges. The planning team is already working on plans for next year’s event, hosted at the Hyatt Regency in Huntington Beach, California August 27-30, 2018, and we’re excited to have the whole Solver family together. More training, more networking, more fun to be had.
Speaking of training, the Solver Academy is about to officially launch before the end of the year, providing users with a subscription-based learning portal of training videos, guides, and exercises. The beauty of this offering is that it empowers learners of all different styles and paces with access to learning at whatever time and at whatever speed. You will see more about this soon as this officially launches early Q1, 2018. And in terms of supporting customers in new and exciting ways, Solver is more dedicated than ever to innovation.
While there hasn’t been a specific designation of Solver’s intention for the year in 2018, a la “the year of [insert focus],” it might very well be The Year of Innovation. The Solver leadership team has formalized the call for innovation across the organization and at all levels into a process where a team comes together to review innovative ideas that will benefit the Solver experience. Once evaluated for how viable the idea is by a team of reviewers, it will either be implemented or addressed with the submitter. So far, Solver is already rolling out one idea for an employee buddy system for new employees that will help with onboarding – not just for getting up to speed on-the-job, but also as a way to build workplace community. It’s an exciting time because innovation has always been the reason for Solver’s success, but now it’s full steam ahead on innovation as fuel.
Regardless of how 2018 shapes up for Solver, the reality for BI360 customers and partners is that the future is cloud. Solver readied for this technology cultural moment – and is working hard to help companies make the transition by not only providing cloud CPM solutions, but also offering a path forward in managing data with both on-premise and cloud enterprise technologies. And from our Solver family to yours, happy holidays and cheers to the New Year!
Solver enables world-class decisions with BI360, a leading web-based CPM suite made up of budgeting, reporting, dashboards, and data warehousing, delivered through a web portal. Solver offers BI360 through cloud and on-premise deployment and is reinventing CPM with its next generation solution. BI360 empowers business users with modern features including innovative use of Excel in the model design process. If you’re interested in learning more, our team is excited to hear about your organizational needs and goals.
