I don’t think I need to tell anyone that this year was a crazy year. Although I think we’ve all been saying that for a few years now so maybe that is actually just normal now. Just about everyone is experiencing some level of burnout or exhaustion with so much going on. But, with that said, that is all the more reason to reflect on what was accomplished this year! It’s important to take a step back to celebrate your accomplishments and all that you achieved this year. Otherwise, you’re likely to just jump into the next project (and the next, and the next) while letting the grind slowly get to you. So I wanted to take a minute to do that for our teams here at Puget Systems!
Marketing
While the economy slowed down last year, the Marketing department did not. Here are some highlights:
- Exhibited at six trade shows / events
- HPA Tech Retreat
- Game Developers Conference
- NAB Show
- SIGGRAPH
- IDEA Conference
- Adobe MAX
- Engaged in five new partnerships
- Launched five new Recommended Systems
- Differentiated our Recommended System from Labs Certified
- Moved our website to WordPress (loving the new design!)
- Published just under 80 articles
- PugetBench had over 40,000 uploads
- Received a shoutout in a Snoop Dogg video!
Consulting
While it is hard to imagine our Consulting team improving the experience of working with them, they did just that in 2022. As we shift further toward providing workstations for larger organizations and enterprise businesses, we saw a distinct need to broaden the level of service that we provide. That is why we spun up an Account Management program to work with our customers to ensure that we are providing the best possible solutions for their needs as well as communicating those needs further up the supply chain. This has led to both product and component improvements for our customers as well as decreased lead times on our solutions.
Another major initiative of last year was to streamline our credit approval process to improve our purchasing experience. By hiring an onboarding specialist to manage those interactions, this has led to quicker net terms determination and PO processing which ensures you get the system you need for the important work that you do in the shortest amount of time possible. We understand that this was a pain point in the past and we heard you loud and clear. This is a perfect example of why we constantly reach out and ask for feedback. It often leads to actionable changes to our processes or experience. So, please, always let us know how we’re doing!
Production
It’s hard to fully appreciate what our Production team has done this year without providing some context. Between supply chain issues and a massive surge in orders, our lead times were up to 7 to 9 weeks in the middle of 2021. This year, we turned that around and consistently delivered within our expected 7 to 10 business days. On top of efficiency improvements, we also made numerous quality improvements, such as engineering stronger bracing and increased testing, to ensure that your systems arrive all in one piece (I’m looking at you shipping carriers) and perform as expected when you fire them up and get to work.
Service
If you’ve worked with our Support / Repair team, you’re probably well aware of their efforts to go above and beyond for our customers. I’m not even sure I fully understand how they’ve made exceeding expectations an expectation but somehow they’ve done it. Through numerous process improvements, we’ve decreased both our time to first action (how long our customers wait to receive a response from us) AND our time to resolution (the length of time it takes to resolve the issues that come up).
Research & Development
This is actually an entirely new department within Puget Systems as of January 1st, 2022. Some of the functions of this department existed before 2022, but this department was formed to bring more intentionality and focus to the product / component qualification process. The result of adding this team has decreased our product qualification time by over 30%. This ultimately leads to Puget Systems’ ability to qualify more components which allows us to be more nimble with any potential supply chain issues. Lastly, this department is the primary reason we were able to look at solutions beyond just workstations and rackmounts and we are now able to resell QNAP solutions as well.
Let’s See, What Else?
While there were plenty of other things that happened within the company, one big one was we hired… A lot. We hired 10 new people in 2022, some of which were brought on to positions that previously did not exist at Puget Systems such as:
It’s easy to not see the forest through the trees if you don’t take a step back. Looking back on this year, wow, I couldn’t be more proud of how much we’ve achieved over the past year. But I’m interested in hearing from you as well! I absolutely encourage you to do the same and share some of your accomplishments in 2022. What are you most proud of this year? Let’s hear it!