Doing things right, doing the right thing.

There's no doubt that the new financial year is off to an unpredictable start, as we all face challenges in our personal and professional lives. Flexibility, optimism and resilience will be necessary for all businesses, but we will come out of this, quite soon I hope.

The expression 'doing things right, doing the right thing' is central to everything we do at Pro2col. It is the expression we're defining our culture by and it permeates everything we do. I put some of our success down to adopting this approach, plus some exceptional colleagues and bloody hard work along the way.

As is now customary I've summarised our past year so that I can look back at our journey in years to come. It's my chance to thank the whole team at Pro2col for an exceptional year and the current situation shouldn’t take away from their achievements. Each and every one of them can be pleased with their contribution to our continued success.

There are so many things I’m proud of but, as I look back on the past financial year, there are ten things in particular that I want to share with you.

1. Revenues and gross margin has grown by a further 35%, making this our most successful financial year to date. Our past six years shows us as having posted CAGR of 40%. Something I'm extremely proud of.
2. We achieved ISO 27001 and were recertified for ISO9001, evidence of our rigorous data security standards and assurance for our customers, that we are handling their data correctly. This is an important landmark for us as the business grows.
3. We have grown our workforce, welcoming Liam Smith to our Technical Team, Bradley Proctor to the Sales Team, Jasmina Chehlarova as Channel Manager and two further recruits during lockdown; Jillie Johnston recently joined us as Sales Administrator and Beb Nasseri as Technical Consultant.
4. Our help desk resolved 94% of tickets in-house with the remaining small number backed off to the vendor. We continue to receive amazing feedback – 98% of customers rated the support desk as good or excellent!
5. We hosted the Official Globalscape User Group events again in London and Manchester with our highest turnout ever. We were joined by the Globalscape team from the US to launch EFT 2020.
6. Globalscape’s International Sales Manager Chris Thacker confirmed we were their number one partner in 2019 and with business as it is I'm sure we're on track again in 2020. We also received a partner award from HelpSystems relating to our work with GoAnywhere MFT.
7. We extended our portfolio to include Robotic Process Automation, which is supporting customers during these challenging time by automating a myriad of manual processes not just file based workflows.
8. We achieved carbon neutral status, offsetting our minimal carbon emissions by protecting and restoring indigenous forest in Nicaragua. As a keen environmentalist, this was a particularly important personal objective for me for the year.
9. We've also recycled 5,000 crisp packets on behalf of the local community, reduced single use plastics, increased our use of ethically sourced office supplies and continued with Bulb - our eco-friendly energy supplier.
10. Lastly, we raised nearly £10,000 for charity by taking part in the Jurassic Coast 100k, Race for Life and Christmas Jumper Day. This was split between a range of good causes and we were Save the Children’s number one fundraiser in the South West region.

As mentioned, this year will likely be tougher and we'll all need to adopt new normals in our working and personal life. Pro2col will continue to be here (or at home) for our customers, as we help them weather the storm. I'll be here to stand by my team, to shield them from the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thank you.

James