Since founding CIP Reporting in 2006 we have continued to grow, innovate, and expand while staying dedicated to providing our customers with not only a great product and fanatical support, but also a personal connection to us, our team, and our product. I am certain every customer can find their contributions among the many interesting and valuable features in CIP Reporting and that process has never stopped. It brings me to a story I wanted to tell the world about us and our history.
Once upon a time we lost a customer. Yes we lost one (1) customer in almost seven (7) years of business. Most companies would be proud of that record but to the contrary it still disturbs me to this day. I have spent countless hours recounting how that happened, what went wrong, and analyzing what we could have done differently. In hind sight it all started with something we worked very hard to do – ensuring concrete product consistency for our customers.
What does that mean and how could that be bad? Well I think in this case too much of a good thing became a bad thing. As we continue to build this product and its offering with countless new features and options year after year we must not interrupt, disrupt, or otherwise disturb our faithful customers and their established use of our system while still creating new tools to solve new problems. So, before we release any new feature our first priority is asking ourselves how will it affect existing customers, will it change anything for them, will it be disruptive? Generally, our answer to this challenge is that existing customers must “opt-in” or “enable” these new features. This way when they upgrade, there is largely no perceived changes to the system ensuring years of uninterrupted system performance unless of course they “opt-in” to a new feature.
I will never forget that fateful day when I got that fateful email from that one customer who announced to me they were terminating their contract with us. We never stop working on our product, listening to customer feedback, meeting new and interesting challenges, so I just could not understand why they would leave us. Of course I asked and they told me although they always loved us and we did a great job for them over the years – their requirements had simply outgrown our system and they needed some new things in their process which CIP did not have. Obviously the next question anyone would have is what those requirements are. I could never explain my disappointment when they detailed the things they needed and they were things we had been doing for years; but we had never trained them on the features. They had already purchased another system and the relationship could be continued before we knew it was at risk. We were not aware of their evolving needs and they were not aware of our evolving product. I blame myself personally for losing this customer to this day.
So how does a company ensure concrete product consistency while promoting new features and capabilities to existing customers? Two words … “This Blog”. That is why this blog exists, so we can send out information about new and exciting things we are doing so that our existing customers can stay up to date, be aware of new things, and adopt them when they see something that works for them. So let me start with a blanket statement about us and what we do:
CIP Reporting provides customizable solutions for unique business requirements represented as documents, forms, and logs. CIP is a software system which installs onto a server (or servers) providing each user with a single software application from which to create, modify, and interact with various business critical documents. Many unique documentation systems may be combined and layered together within one system to provide a standardized solution for the enterprise.
That was a very formal statement; a less formal statement would be … We solve unique problems. Our software is designed to configure, expand, and grow with you. No two customers are the same with us. Sharing information between departments selectively, adding new information processes, email notifications, layers of approvals, customized charts and graphs; you name it, we probably do it or we will do it for you. If you are our customer and have growing needs, you are in luck. You are partnered with a growing company, with a growing product, a growing team, and we are ready to grow with you.
The reminder to us is to make sure we spend more time telling the world about the great things we are doing every week and just a tiny bit less time doing them. The reminder to you is to talk to us as your requirements grow and change – we are not just a product company; we are your solution partner.
In the meanwhile, this blog is going to get back to the basics going forward and focus on spreading the word about unique problems you can solve with CIP Reporting. I would like to thank a certain customer who I ran into a few weeks ago who reminded me how important this blog really is to sending that message. You know who you are, you are a long time customer, and I appreciate your wisdom.
Our next article will be titled “Impractical Files Put to an Impractical Use: The Piles of Files Problem”. We will show you some creative ways to use CIP Reporting to turn those directories of files on your file server to functional data you can really use.
Oh, and to the one that got away – if you see this – we would love to have you back any time. Call us, we miss you!
Jason Riffel
President and CEO
CIP Reporting
703-444-9955
About Jason Riffel
Jason is the president and CEO of CIP Reporting the gold standard of Risk Management and Incident Reporting Software. Jason is a lifelong technologist and serial entrepreneur with a borderline unhealthy obsession with all things technology and business. Google+