EnvisionWare celebrated its 13th birthday in October. Over more than a decade our Company has focused on innovation and moderate growth. For many years our business plan called for one major new product per year and a steady, relatively controlled increase in new customers that was consistent year over year. We have been fortunate to experience significant demands for new library systems in recent years, something many might call explosive growth. (more)
While we have never lost our appreciation for those who began their relationship with us in those early years and have we certainly have not abandoned the needs of small and mid-size libraries, our Company has an outward appearance of "a big library company" perhaps because larger libraries tend to make the news. But our foundation and the vast majority of our customers are small to mid-sized libraries and much of our growth continues in those areas. I get excited when a library with 6 computers becomes a new customer.
EnvisionWare is making some changes in our organization in order to focus more on the service to our core market, libraries. We are making major strides in the management of an organization that is focused self service and library efficiency solutions. We created a new position in early November that is Director of Sales and Library Business Development. This role carries expanded responsibilities and it's purpose is clearly defined with a focus on libraries -- more than 95% of EnvisionWare's business. By making these changes we continue to serve the specialized markets through our partners who work in those areas, which lets us dedicate our staff to the market we understand. Everyone in our sales consulting group has years of library experience and some have been in libraries for well over a decade.
In the early years we had a cross section of corporate, retail and other types of customers. A large majority of those non-library customers continue to use our products and new, non-library customers join our family each month. In order to ensure they receive the best possible service and get the focus they need, the development of our strategic partner program (we have partnered since the beginning) is changing so that our partners can focus on the special needs of those organizations. This gives those customers a voice and it ensures that companies specializing in those markets are there to help them with specific needs.
We recently hired three new employees you'll learn about soon. One was working in RFID when it was developed for library use. Two others came to us from libraries, actual customer sites, adding customer perspective along with the skills of an additional staff librarian.
If you follow our news you know that we recently added a field technician force to back up our own staff resources so that over 200 trained technicians can be close to our customers when you need immediate onsite assistance.
Scott Fothergill, who was promoted to Chief Operating Officer in September, is keeping our entire management team focused on you. Scott was the CIO at Columbus Metropolitan Library for thirty years. CML was named Library of the Year in 2010 and you may have read recently that CML received the 2011 National Medal for Community Service. Imagine the positive impact of a leader in our organization that was part of the management team at Columbus.
Scott has just announced another new position, Director of Financial Operations, which will be assumed by Alexis Seymour who was our Controller. Many of you enjoyed working with Alexis in her other role and will continue to appreciate her positive energy in this new position. Alexis will leverage her Masters of Accountancy, her experience in accounting management at AT&T and her CPA certification to assist our Company in the delivery of creative new financial services as well as overall financial management for the corporation. This new role is of vital importance to our customers as we focus on the needs of libraries who are seeking creative ways of delivering cost effective services to a more demanding public.
As 2012 approaches, EnvisionWare is keenly aware of the challenges faced by libraries today. Our organization is expanding and adapting to deliver new services and new products with a focus on the equal importance of a library with a staff of two or a staff of 1,000. We have hundreds of new features in development across the product line as well as well as creative new products and we are embracing the needs of our customers and prospective customers with some exciting new service offerings that will be announced in the first quarter of the new year.
