As 2015 hits its stride, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on 2014 in our annual Year in Review. Like 2013 before it, 2014 was another busy and successful year for LoopUp in terms of business growth, product leadership, company expansion, and our ongoing involvement in the tech community. Here are some of the highlights.
Business Growth
In February, we announced a major technology and go-to-market partnership with Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise selected the LoopUp product for its new white-labelled enterprise cloud collaboration solution, designed to offer business professionals a less painful and more productive collaboration experience. Alongside our existing channel agreements with BT and Cable & Wireless Communications, LoopUp’s market reach continues to grow.
Our direct distribution growth remained strong, with a combination of new business acquisition and a growing long-term customer base. During 2014, we grew revenues by over 40%, and over 450 enterprises switched their users to LoopUp for their remote meetings. Like 2013 before it, we saw a negative net churn – i.e. net growth – in our long-term customer base. This is particularly notable in an industry that’s known for customer churn and price-led switching. We believe the common perception that ‘conferencing is a commodity’ to be a premature perception.
Product Leadership
In 2014 we received a number of awards recognizing both the quality of our product and our support team. We’re all about solving classic problems of conferencing and collaboration with a product that’s actually easy to use, and Frost & Sullivan praised us for exactly that with their Best Practices Award for European Entrepreneurial Company of the Year (watch the video to discover why “the days of suffering through conference calls may be at an end”). We received a Best in Biz Award for Enterprise Service of the Year, a nomination for a Compass Intelligence Mobility Award for Mobile Software: Speech-Based Services, a Tech Tour selection as one of Europe’s Best Digital Investment Opportunities and an award for Customer Service Department of the Year from Customer Sales and Service World Awards. These accolades further support our belief that standing out from the competition with a differentiated product that’s focused on solving widely recognized problems will lead to success.
Company Expansion
We significantly expanded our team in 2014, including an intake of 20 college graduates from UK and US universities as part of our expanded college graduate program; an additional 15 new recruits are planned for January 2015. We welcomed Barmak Meftah to the LoopUp board of directors; Barmak is CEO of AlienVault with a wealth of experience and success in enterprise software. Our teams across our global offices continued to go from strength to strength: as mentioned above, our customer support team received recognition for the quality of their work. Additionally, our EVP and General Counsel, Robert Baugh, was shortlisted for Solicitor of the Year in the 2014 Law Society Excellence Awards.
Involvement in the Tech Community
Again during the year, we participated actively in the wider technology business community. We continued to facilitate the Silicon Valley Internship Programme (SVIP), now entering its third year, which offers top UK computer science graduates the opportunity to take up a one-year paid internship with high-growth technology companies in the Bay Area. We exhibited at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2014 Orlando, where I presented a session on “Conferencing: Ending 20 Years of Pain”. I also participated in a panel at ITExpo, Las Vegas, entitled “Productive Collaboration: Using the Right Tools for Process Improvement”, as well as a panel at Frost & Sullivan’s GIL 2014 conference on how companies can “leverage innovation as a resource to address global challenges”. Robert Baugh co-organized a Tech City Law event, showcasing opportunities for lawyers in the London tech scene. Our Director of Marketing, Jana Rhyu, presented at Dreamforce 2014 on how to choose technology solutions to help you get more done, more efficiently. We also showcased our product at the sell-out launch party for the British Chamber of Commerce SME Marketplace initiative in Hong Kong.
In Summary
2014 was another very successful year, for which we have our LoopUp team and all of our customers and partners to thank. Thank you for all your hard work and support over the past year and very much looking forward to 2015!
To stay updated, follow us on Twitter @LoopUpTeam, LinkedIn and Google+.
For more posts About LoopUp, check out:
LoopUp: 2013 in Review
Frost & Sullivan Video Praises LoopUp’s Conferencing Solution
LoopUp Receives Best in Biz Award for Enterprise Service of the Year
LoopUp Compass Intelligence Mobility Award Nomination
LoopUp Silver Winner in Customer Sales and Service World Awards 2014
