Stoneridge Software Mission: Helping Clients Win
Helping clients win. It feels good to say that – to finally put the right words together to describe what we do every day at Stoneridge Software. After a recent effort of examining the purpose of our company, our mission has been officially updated to reflect what we do and how we do it. The importance of getting this right provides clear guiding principles, recognizes our unique gifts in the market, and most importantly, unites our team in the exciting and rewarding pursuit of helping clients win.
When we started the company, we tossed out a slogan as our mission statement "Enable Your Business." That idea came from a conversation with our first customer when he was talking about his role in IT being a "business enabler." I still think it's a great slogan for IT, to enable the business to do what it wants to do.
As Stoneridge Software has grown and matured, we’ve found that it's not enough for us just to help IT do what they want to do. Our desire is to have a true impact on your business - to help you use technology to achieve strategic initiatives and be successful in any way your business defines it.
More Than Technology
It isn't just about the technology. When you undertake a business application project, it's only partly about the technology. It's more about the processes, the data, the business intelligence needed to run the business, as well as the technology. We are doing much more than helping to enable our clients' business and we wanted to reflect that the new mission statement.
Our full mission statement is:
"To help clients win - through intentional leadership, thoughtful teaching, and eye-opening possibilities."
This was not something I dreamt up one day - this was a total team effort. We spent three months gathering feedback and holding listening sessions to understand what gets our team out of bed in the morning and what our clients treasure the most. Quite a few ideas were floated, but we kept coming back to the idea of helping our clients win. The new mission was unveiled to our team at the fourth quarter all-company meeting and I'm thrilled to share it with all of our clients and future clients, because of the power behind it to help you achieve your goals.
Why win?
We chose "helping clients win" because every business has its own definition of what it means to win. For some, winning is growing revenue; for some, it's gaining market share; for some, it's adding to the bottom line. For our non-profit clients, it might be growing their impact in their communities. Within the company, each person has their own definition of winning. For the IT manager, it might be delivering the maximum value to the business for the least investment. The project manager wins when the team meets deadlines and collaborates effectively; the data team wins when the data is clean and in all the right places. You define your "win" - we just help you get there.
Intentional leadership:
We know that clients don't implement business applications for a living. For most people, it's something you do once or twice per career. We do it every day. To help our clients win we provide intentional, pre-meditated instructions to help navigate all the changes that come with a new or updated business application. You will see us do more on this front in the future, but we've already launched change management sessions to help clients prepare for the impact of a new business application system. We come to every implementation with our own implementation methodology that is iterative and designed to get the maximum amount of input in the minimum amount of time.
Thoughtful teaching:
Since day one of the organization, we have wanted to share the information we know. Even though there’s a lot of information on the web about Microsoft Dynamics and the Power Platform, we felt there was an opportunity to share more content on how you use the products. We relish the opportunity to help grow that content. We started our blog when we first started the company and we have updated it at least three times a week for the past eight years. Everyone on our team is encouraged to write blogs and share their knowledge and experience with the world. During our implementations, we take the time to teach our clients as much as they are willing to learn - one goal we put forth in our projects is to make our clients self-sufficient. I like to say we want our clients to "want" our help and we don't want them to feel like they "have to have" our help. With thoughtful teaching, we aim to put you in a position to take the applications forward without our help at the end of the project.
Eye-opening possibilities:
The world of technology changes so quickly and Microsoft continues to innovate with new business applications and updates to the existing applications nearly every day. It's honestly a lot to keep track of, but we have the team to do it. This doesn’t mean we throw every shiny new object at our clients - we research and test and if it is something we recommend we will provide context as to why a new technology or feature will help you win. It's impossible for clients to keep up with all the advances in technology, so it's our job to introduce new technologies that will really make a difference for your business. We love opening clients' eyes to new ways of doing things that help you win.
Our company recently achieved a milestone, reaching the threshold of 200 team members. I’m inspired daily to see how all 200 people are focused on helping clients win in many ways, and it's an honor to call Stoneridge Software home. The trust our clients put in us is sincerely appreciated and not taken lightly.
If you are a current or future client of Stoneridge Software, our mission is to help you win, and we won't stop until we have succeeded.
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