October 15, 2010
2009 End of Year Communcation: 12/16/2009
Crown Team,
I want to start this email by wishing you and your family a Happy Holiday. As we enter into the Holiday season, it is a time to reflect on the past year and a time to think about the future. In that light, I’d like to give you my thoughts on the same here at Crown.
2009. Wow. Where do I start?!? While the world at large has definitely been in turmoil, we have been going through our own transformation. We’ve gone through a year of tightening, refining and renewed focus on our clients. We’ve lost some friends and good co-workers in the process, and had to step up each of our own efforts to help get through a knot hole. It is clear now that we’ve started making the transition back in the growth direction, but a prolonged period of skepticism, worry and questioning has definitely taken its toll. Encouraging signs that we’ve begun the hike back upwards include major wins at LexisNexis (the first phase of a $1m project), several POC wins that kick off major initiatives (Pearson, PWC, and others), a resurgence of WaM business in XOM, STM, and most recently a verbal win with STEricsson for our largest ($2.0m) and longest (5 year commitment) engagement in Crown history. It seems the world is gearing up to spend in 2010. I too have the tendency to question these as blips because of the difficult times and dose of reality we’ve had in 2009.
2010. I can’t predict what 2010 will bring, we both know that. What I can tell you though is that we now have a company that is prepared for whatever 2010 will bring. Even if the more recent wins and resurgence of opportunities are merely short bursts, we now have a company that will survive and thrive. We can hit singles and win the game, a place that we haven’t been in a long time. What truly excites me about 2010 is that hitting the anticipated doubles and triples will propel us towards some major growth and opportunity for us all to develop personally, professionally, and as a team. With triples and some home runs currently being closed, I expect we will have a very positive year in 2010. While the path has taken some prolonging turns, our mission has not. We are committed as a group to build a $50m company in the next 3 years that is relevant. The $50m and 3 years is only important in so much as it is directional and a way to keep score. It is also important to understand that it is not a destination, but merely a point to shoot for along the way. Relevant. Relevant is something we all hope for ourselves, and something that we hope to be a part of building. Relevant means something that moves the needle and has an impact on our clients in their attainment of their goals. Relevant includes building something that we believe will be transformative. Relevant means industry defining and disruptive. We’ve already started our trek towards being relevant by focusing on a disruptive model of hybrid software and services. We’re starting to take that a step further now in outsourcing and bundling software and services into a turnkey solution for our customers (STEricsson). Relevant is a gauge we’ll use in determining where we invest in the future and how we guide the business.
Crown’s executive team has spent the better part of the last 4 months focusing on our plans for 2010. We locked ourselves in a room over the last 2 days to present, challenge and better those plans to the point that we believe we have realistic, rational and achievable goals, strategies for achieving those goals, improvement priorities and action plans. I will be scheduling a Crown Town Hall for January for you to hear those plans from each of the business leaders. Please look for the invite. Afterwards, each of the business leaders will be scheduling in person meetings to review them in more detail with you.
Thank You. I’d like to finish this communication by thanking you for your commitment, sacrifices, efforts and achievements. They have in no small part been a large contributor to strengthening our company.
I guarantee I missed someone that deserves recognition as much as the shout-outs above. I also know that these aren’t the only or even the most defining contributions you’ve given to the company. For that, I apologize in advance. I also want to take this opportunity to put more than words behind my thanks. You will be receiving a holiday gift from Crown over the coming days as a small token of appreciation, an Amazon Kindle. Amazon’s next generation Kindle is a disrupting technology that I personally believe will transform the book industry. We thought it was the perfect gift as we seek to build a transformational and disrupting business in our own industry. Please reach out to Michelle Brahm to let her know how you want it sent to you.
I want to wrap this communication up by asking you to believe. Believe in the positive signs. Believe in the company you’ve helped to build. Believe in the learning process we’ve gone through together as a company which will help us to be much stronger. Believe in your team here at Crown. And, most importantly, believe in yourself. I leave you with one quote. A quote that is defining for me as a person and for how I think about your efforts at Crown. This quote is stenciled on the ceiling in my home office. It was given as part of a larger speech to the world by Teddy Roosevelt at the Sorbonne in Paris France in 1910, a year after he left the Presidential office after serving 2 terms which are widely recognized as one of the most transformative periods in American history. Teddy was speaking about “Citizenship in a Republic”. I like the quote because it is defining of the type of person it takes to build something truly great.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat”.
Here’s to Triumph of High Achievement! Happy Holiday.
Richard, Mark and the entire Executive Team.
I want to start this email by wishing you and your family a Happy Holiday. As we enter into the Holiday season, it is a time to reflect on the past year and a time to think about the future. In that light, I’d like to give you my thoughts on the same here at Crown.
2009. Wow. Where do I start?!? While the world at large has definitely been in turmoil, we have been going through our own transformation. We’ve gone through a year of tightening, refining and renewed focus on our clients. We’ve lost some friends and good co-workers in the process, and had to step up each of our own efforts to help get through a knot hole. It is clear now that we’ve started making the transition back in the growth direction, but a prolonged period of skepticism, worry and questioning has definitely taken its toll. Encouraging signs that we’ve begun the hike back upwards include major wins at LexisNexis (the first phase of a $1m project), several POC wins that kick off major initiatives (Pearson, PWC, and others), a resurgence of WaM business in XOM, STM, and most recently a verbal win with STEricsson for our largest ($2.0m) and longest (5 year commitment) engagement in Crown history. It seems the world is gearing up to spend in 2010. I too have the tendency to question these as blips because of the difficult times and dose of reality we’ve had in 2009.
2010. I can’t predict what 2010 will bring, we both know that. What I can tell you though is that we now have a company that is prepared for whatever 2010 will bring. Even if the more recent wins and resurgence of opportunities are merely short bursts, we now have a company that will survive and thrive. We can hit singles and win the game, a place that we haven’t been in a long time. What truly excites me about 2010 is that hitting the anticipated doubles and triples will propel us towards some major growth and opportunity for us all to develop personally, professionally, and as a team. With triples and some home runs currently being closed, I expect we will have a very positive year in 2010. While the path has taken some prolonging turns, our mission has not. We are committed as a group to build a $50m company in the next 3 years that is relevant. The $50m and 3 years is only important in so much as it is directional and a way to keep score. It is also important to understand that it is not a destination, but merely a point to shoot for along the way. Relevant. Relevant is something we all hope for ourselves, and something that we hope to be a part of building. Relevant means something that moves the needle and has an impact on our clients in their attainment of their goals. Relevant includes building something that we believe will be transformative. Relevant means industry defining and disruptive. We’ve already started our trek towards being relevant by focusing on a disruptive model of hybrid software and services. We’re starting to take that a step further now in outsourcing and bundling software and services into a turnkey solution for our customers (STEricsson). Relevant is a gauge we’ll use in determining where we invest in the future and how we guide the business.
Crown’s executive team has spent the better part of the last 4 months focusing on our plans for 2010. We locked ourselves in a room over the last 2 days to present, challenge and better those plans to the point that we believe we have realistic, rational and achievable goals, strategies for achieving those goals, improvement priorities and action plans. I will be scheduling a Crown Town Hall for January for you to hear those plans from each of the business leaders. Please look for the invite. Afterwards, each of the business leaders will be scheduling in person meetings to review them in more detail with you.
Thank You. I’d like to finish this communication by thanking you for your commitment, sacrifices, efforts and achievements. They have in no small part been a large contributor to strengthening our company.
- ExxonMobil Team – Tyler, Dana, Denis, Dan, Matt, Matias, Ian, Craig for repeated deals, building stronger customer relationship, identifying leads
- EPA Team – Doug, Matt for their strong relationship, identifying new opportunities and delighting the client
- ST/ST-Ericsson Team – Angelo, Frank, Matias, Dana, Dan, software group, rest of WAM team for delivering tough project with tough client and identifying STE outsourcing opportunity that we’re close to winning ...not to mention the long hours and difficult travel.
- TI Team – Thor, Bryce, and Angelo for their long hours, moving requirements, nights and weekends, new technology and new opportunities
- Army Team – Rene, Robb, Sergio, Doug, Frank for building new value propositions, winning one of the biggest projects of the year and identifying new opportunities
- IURC Team – Tyler, Bryce for selling a product, transitioning account responsibility, and getting repeat deals
- Citi Team – Ian Hudson and Craig for their efforts and results in a new Web Composer sale
- Andy Zupfer – for your leadership in driving us towards Day, for your support on STE and STM and for your overall contributions to the direction of the WaM business.
- Jeremy LeBoy – for your effort on the CHI proposal, your time here is short, but impactful.
- Kevin Burns – for delivering two quality Web Gear releases (4.1 and 4.2) on time, and overcoming technical challenges to set up IHS/WebSphere test environment
- Brian Bailer – for leading the implementation of SiteBuilder 6.1 and 6.2 plus ST Microelectronics managed extensions
- Graham Hutchinson – for managing ST managed-extension effort to completion and imlementing new SiteBuilder quality program for SiteBuilder 6.2 with iterative execution of a battery of over 900 test cases
- Ian Joyce – for providing dedicated support to GSK to help get win acceptance for their new SiteBuilder deployment
- Ken Casey – for developing Buldoser Center and extension architecture which has been successfully employed at GSK for FileNet migration and Jaguar Landrover for eRoom migration
- Mark Procopio – for producing Buldoser releases; Enabling sales success and trail-blazing a model for customer ETL project success based on remote developer support at Jaguar Landrover and BHP Billiton; and double booking himself to support success of professional services project at Pearson
- Amy Strader – for consistently achieving < 1 hour initial response time and repeatedly receiving kudos from customers
- Jason Holt – for implementing test programs for Buldoser, Buldoser Center, and Lotus Notes Connector releases and delivering outstanding product demonstrations week after week
- John Moerer – for your leadership in the ETL business and the Denver office and for managing the joint engineering efforts for Buldoser with GSA and BHP Billiton, for Buldoser Center with JLR and GSK and for LNC with RedBull and Glencore.
- Bruce Rudolph – for your drive towards software engineering processes and standards and managing Crown’s largest yet off-shore development effort on LNC.
- Doug O’Keefe / Kevin Barth – for crafting a proposal to land a strategic roadmap project that could potentially lead to the largest single project in the history of EPM.
- Chris Harris – for his efforts at GEO that led the CIO to state that we are their go to partner for all things Hyperion.
- Dennis Hogan – for managing a difficult 53rd project
- Abe Combs – for acting as project manager/lead developer/ and engagement manager for Luxottica.
- Pete Puskar – for stepping into a leadership role on the latest Luxottica Project
- Maggie, Erin, & Carey – for doing whatever has been asked of them on all of the above projects.
- Mike Pritts – for his tireless effort in getting ST up and running and our first outsourcing email campaign live and for his creative talent and effort in getting CP.com to represent our business.
- Angelo Smith - for his ability to talk customers back off the ledge and for keeping the STM / STE projects heading in the right direction
- Sean Steimer - for jumping in and learning 6.5 almost overnight in order to support a new client – United Health Group and helping Crown end a 3-year reign at E&Y on a positive note.
- Sergio DelCastillo- for his work at MGM around their FileNet Migration and proving once again at Liberty Mutual he’s an valuable member of the team and can help generate new business.
- Rene Wagner - for continuing to keep us in front of opportunities at Sempra and significantly expanding work over and above the annual support they originally contracted.
- Matt Hengst - for traveling to Idaho week after week and doing a great job in a difficult environment
- Rob Nelson - for his great work in managing and navigating the political situation at Idaho SIF and expanding our presence at that account while providing leadership and mentoring in our Denver office to our consultants.
- Phil Law, Terry Keeney and Sam Mussell for blazing the xCP trail at Mercantile Bank and working A LOT of extra hours to bring the project across the finish line
- Mitch Robertson - for his great work in going over and above to develop a great demo for the State of West Virginia and keeping himself billable at Kindred Healthcare (another extension through January this week!)
- Michael Birzh - for his insight in how to really differentiate ourselves in the ETL space
- Tuan Lu - for his leadership on the E&Y and Idaho SIF accounts... One of our truly brilliant technical minds.
- Andrea Kozak - for her great sales support around migrations in Life Sciences leading to our work at GSK and others and her innovative use of Crown’s hybrid software-services model with U-Viewer win at Takeda
- Charlie Giardino - Rene Robles and Anthony Romito for their great work at WRG which led to us turning that into a large account and beating FileNet in head-to-head competition for an ECM project in 2010.
- Craig Macklin – for his awesome job of reviving Crown’s presence at XOM
- Ernst & Ferhat – for their representation of Crown to the broader European community and for their ability to drive success in new territories.
- Leo Shields - for jumping in and helping us dig out of a hole at CNA
- Doug Acker - for helping us to understand the game at government accounts and for creating some fo the best new marketing content the company has seen around social networking, knowledge management and collaboration
- Warren Brenner – for your significant contribution to many software deals and your heroic efforts more recently at GSK.
- Rose Peluso – for her unparalleled ability to close software deals and for closing Crown’s largest buldoser deal ever, $212k, at the GSA
- Frank Riley - for keeping us on track at the Army, ST and for his leadership in the Project Management arena.
- Candice Ryan - for creating a great project overview for CNA and her work in supporting Charlie in the East
- Tom & Aaron – for keeping the lights on, computers running and fixes coming. Your contributions behind the scenes are noticed.
- Julie Eddy for staying as late as needed to get the contracts out on time, no matter how many hoops she has to jump through. Dealing with the GSA contracting mess, and, keeping us stocked and well fed!
- Leilani/Susan/Mary - for keeping the funds flowing and the paychecks and expense reimbursements coming. Their vigilance keeps us in compliance.
- John Schomburg. – for always being reliable and getting the numbers right, rework them again and again to get them JUST right.
- Michelle Brahm– for always being counted on to come through with the last minute in a pinch, thinking of others first and how to help them succeed and managing to keep a smile even through the rough times.
I guarantee I missed someone that deserves recognition as much as the shout-outs above. I also know that these aren’t the only or even the most defining contributions you’ve given to the company. For that, I apologize in advance. I also want to take this opportunity to put more than words behind my thanks. You will be receiving a holiday gift from Crown over the coming days as a small token of appreciation, an Amazon Kindle. Amazon’s next generation Kindle is a disrupting technology that I personally believe will transform the book industry. We thought it was the perfect gift as we seek to build a transformational and disrupting business in our own industry. Please reach out to Michelle Brahm to let her know how you want it sent to you.
I want to wrap this communication up by asking you to believe. Believe in the positive signs. Believe in the company you’ve helped to build. Believe in the learning process we’ve gone through together as a company which will help us to be much stronger. Believe in your team here at Crown. And, most importantly, believe in yourself. I leave you with one quote. A quote that is defining for me as a person and for how I think about your efforts at Crown. This quote is stenciled on the ceiling in my home office. It was given as part of a larger speech to the world by Teddy Roosevelt at the Sorbonne in Paris France in 1910, a year after he left the Presidential office after serving 2 terms which are widely recognized as one of the most transformative periods in American history. Teddy was speaking about “Citizenship in a Republic”. I like the quote because it is defining of the type of person it takes to build something truly great.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat”.
Here’s to Triumph of High Achievement! Happy Holiday.
Richard, Mark and the entire Executive Team.