As 2014 is drawing to a close, I thought it’d be fun to look back on the last year at Moraware. First, a big thanks to all of our customers, employees, and partners for a great year.
Team
This year, we added three new folks to our team. Patrick, Jason, and Kathleen are all spending part of their time answering phone calls and emails. But, they’re all heavily involved in improving our marketing, sales, and support, too.
Just a few of their most visible contributions in 2014 include a new logo, new website, new help platform, new “getting started” guides, a podcast for the countertop industry, and a fresh perspective on how we communicate with our prospects and customers.
Plus, it’s a delight to work with really smart people who care about our customers… and are working hard to keep making Moraware better.
I’m really looking forward to some more major improvements to the overall experience in 2015.
Customers
Depending on how you count it, we’ve got just over 1000 countertop fabrication companies using our software now. “THANK YOU!” to everyone’ who’s using our products!
We’ve gone through some growing pains, but other than getting some grey hair, I feel like we’re in good shape again. In 2014, we spent a lot of time figuring out how to scale our support to match our growth. With more folks at Moraware concentrating on our customers’ success, we’re going to provide better support and software than ever.
Now, one of our goals for 2015 is to increase the rate that we’re adding new customers, knowing that they’re going to be successful with CounterGo and JobTracker.
Product Features
We’ve added new features to our products. Probably, the most visible ones were in CounterGo – slab images on countertop drawings and layouts, miscellaneous items, and having multiple bump-outs.
But, there’s a non-stop stream of small features that we don’t necessarily talk about publicly. Every day, we’re fixing bugs and making incremental improvements. Remember that obscure error message you saw flash by once a few months ago?
It’s gone because we’re constantly looking at error logs and trying to figure out all of the ways (that we didn’t always expect) that folks are using our software.
Behind the scenes
Every day, lots of companies depend on our service running smoothly, quickly, and bug-free. That responsibility weighs on all of us, and in 2014, we spent a huge amount of effort re-thinking and making changes to our infrastructure. It’s a bit frustrating that form most folks that’s invisible, but it’s really important.
Even though we have rarely have issues, it’s never enough, and we’re going to continue making that better over time.
One of the luxuries we have as a software company is that we can occasionally “scratch our own itch” and improve our own tools and automate repetitive tasks.
Building software for just one company (us) is incredibly expensive and time consuming, but some of the improvements to our internal billing and reporting systems have made it much easier to help our customers, so it’s worth it.
The most visible outcome… from months of development effort… has been that you can add your own new JobTracker and CounterGo users. But the real gain has been behind the scenes – we spend much less time on the administrivia and can work on really adding value for our users.
Cheers to Susan!
We’re also sad to announce that Susan Pitts is moving on from Moraware, for her next adventure. Most of you have talked to her on the phone at one point or another over the last decade. Now that we’ve got more folks on the customer-facing team, she felt like things were in good hands. We’re all going to miss her.
These days you’ll probably find her hiking, snowshoeing, or skiing in the Sierras with friends.
Thank you
I feel incredibly lucky to be working at Moraware – because of our great team, awesome customers, and fun industry… 2014 was an amazing year, and “cheers!” to a great 2015.
