As we look forward to a new year, it’s always good to look back and find the things we were grateful for—and challenged by—in the year that came before. I know that many reading this are thinking, “Thanks, 2021! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!” because it may not have lived up to our hopeful expectations at the end of a very challenging 2020.
However, there was a lot of good with the bad and we think it’s important to take inventory, always. So, without further ado, here are the top 5 things that challenged and inspired Tigerpaw in 2021.
Mastering (or at least contending with) Remote Work
Before the pandemic, Tigerpaw was pretty much an “in-office” organization. Like many other companies, we thought by the end of 2021 we’d have most of our Tigers back at HQ in Omaha. Boy, were we wrong! There’s actually a silver lining, though. We learned that both culturally and organizationally, we could not only function with a lot of our folks remote, but we could also thrive.
You may have experienced the same at your company. We all grew in ways that supported new work styles and gave our valued team members the flexibility needed to continue doing what we all love to do: Serve our customers. Even better, we were able to extend employment opportunities to a whole new group of people and have welcomed several new Tigers to the team who reside outside our HQ geographic area. We’re always on the hunt, though, so check out our current opportunities to see if there’s a fit for you or someone you know.
Building the Top 100 Influencers List
Every channel has its heroes, those who go above and beyond to help elevate all they work with and even those they compete with. Jay McBain of Forrester Research did a great job of highlighting the most visible channel leaders in the IT/Telecom channels and we got to thinking it would be great to do the same for another channel we serve: the Office Equipment channel. We researched thousands of channel leaders and applied a unique algorithm to determine the Top 100 MPS Influencers. This list isn’t an “awards” list, but rather a celebration and acknowledgement of those doing so much to drive growth and evolution in the industry.
Since its inception, the Top 100 group has been meeting weekly to discuss the top business challenges of our times, as well as sharing their expertise to find novel and important ways for us ALL to do better. Curious to know who these leaders are? You can find out HERE, and be sure to follow them on LinkedIn so you too can benefit from all they do. Oh, and stay tuned in 2022 for more inspiration and outreach.
The Return of Tradeshows (sort of)
Before we go any further, yes, yes, sadly YES, the tradeshows we have grown to love attending and supporting over the years haven’t all returned. Tigerpaw typically attends and sponsors 6 or more shows a year, and in 2021 that simply didn’t happen. It probably didn’t for you either. Wave after wave of this pandemic have made in-person events difficult (CES 2022 anyone?) to coordinate, and at times, impossible. We did attend a couple of important events, however, and they were simply AWESOME!
TAG National hosted their annual Convention in Dallas, and Tigerpaw sponsored and attended, along with many of our customers. We were also able to participate in an important converged services exposition, ITEX 2021, in Las Vegas in November. A couple of events even went forward that we couldn’t attend because of pandemic travel restrictions that directly impacted some of our international tigers. Here’s hoping that in 2022 we can ALL attend and support more important channel activities.
Education In Abundance
If you haven’t visited the Tigerpaw blog, Tigerpaw Radio, or TigerTube, what are you waiting for?! We produced more educational content than ever in our 30+ year history, all designed to help our partners and customers to grow their businesses.
We interviewed some of the most influential and important leaders in the business and shared their insights with you, completely free of charge. “Why would a software company do that?” you might ask. The answer is simple: our core purpose is to help technology services companies run better businesses and sleep better at night. While a big part of that is our purpose-built software, we truly give a sh!t about your success and believe that you deserve the best from your partners (and that’s more than just our awesome code).
We learn a lot from these interviews, roundtables and fireside chats, too. Rising tides raise all ships, and the healthier we all are through continued learning, the better business will be for us all. As you’re here (and once you’ve finished reading this post of course!), why not check out a few of our faves:
- Video: How Do You Define Great Customer Service?
- Podcast: Social Selling Like A Jedi Master.
- Blog: 2 Critical Printer Security Holes MSPs and IT Services Providers Should Never Ignore
- Tool: Technician Utilization Calculator
Development Galore
Code, code, and more code! The Tigerpaw development team has been busy refining our business automation toolsets to help our customers more than ever, creating new and exciting features to give you more time back than ever before. This is what we’ve been up to based on your input, and delivered:
- Pricebook enhancements to identify equipment, supplies, parts and accessories
- Added a Related Items function to tie parts and accessories to equipment
- Automation Nation:
- Automated technician assignment based on user defined variables
- Automated inventory replenishment based on usage and min/max thresholds
- Automated invoicing for contract invoices
- Automated data collection agent imports for call center data, printer reads, and any application that can provide reads
Our “Unleashed” program has helped to end the tyranny of the box for those who prefer cloud infrastructure and our new managed print features are helping a whole new class of provider.
It has always been our mandate to be the best, to give a darn and to continuously help providers of all stripes to do more with less. Given the “Great Resignation” and other challenges making it harder to secure all the folks you’d like, business automation has never been more important than it is now. Improve the way you do business in 2022 by starting HERE.
Tigerpaw Software would like to thank you all for being our partners, customers and friends in 2021. The year was filled with some incredible things, some challenging things, but all of them made better for doing them together. Let’s get ready for a whole lot more ROAR in the year ahead!
