It’s About Belonging

We call our user group the IAB — Innovation Advisory Board. We created the Board because we care about our customers. We care about their satisfaction. And because we care about them and their satisfaction, we care about their input.

We held this year’s annual meeting of the IAB October 12 and 13. While we told our customers we’d make the meeting in-person and virtual, more than 70 people chose to attend. Our customers got to spend an evening with their product teams. Our people got to get to know our customers better during an enjoyable outing at Topgolf. We used the Management Education Center at Michigan State University for our full conference meetings. And we used our offices in Troy for our breakout working sessions.

We learned much.

Perhaps because we held the IAB at a point at which the world may be finding (or fighting) its way out of a global pandemic, one of the most important things we learned is this: IAB also means it’s about belonging. People were obviously happy to be out, to be with other people, to share interests common and diverse, to engage in conversation and to be engaged, to compare notes on business in general and on the use of our software in particular, and to be the social animals we all are.

And this might sound corny, but we all reveled in the spirit of teamwork that characterized those two days. The best traveled streets accommodate two-way traffic. Similarly, the most conducive environments for learning are mutual. We learned from each other. We earned growing respect from each other. We were honest and transparent, and we were repaid in kind. The experience made us all the more sure that, while we built our business by developing and maintaining software,  we maintain our business by developing trusting relationships.

In the coming days and weeks, we’ll be sharing some videos we shot during the three days we were together. What struck us most about seeing the rough footage was how happy people are. We believe you’ll see in them what we do.

In the meantime, we’ll keep doing what we do.