Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon…

Wow – as I look at the calendar today, I realize the importance of the 15th of April… Today, xLerate turns one year old.  And with that, I feel very proud.  Looking at numbers and statistics (ah, how we love and loathe them all at the same time) people passed on to me when I first started down this venture, the numbers were astonishingly horrific.  Thanks to an article in Entrepreneur Weekly, it was stated that 70 to 80 percent of all small businesses fail within the first year.  (I would like to add that this magazine is no longer in publication as of today…).  That is a massive number, albeit one that I always thought was slightly inflated…

Looking back over the year, I am extremely proud of what has been accomplished.  We have been able to :

• assist over 40 companies with their Salesforce.com implementations, with a focus on the small to medium business sector.
• use our experience and expertise with the application to act as advocates in the Ottawa area through the user group and through emails/phone calls from people using the system and just wanting to ask a quick question.
• without much in the way of a marketing budget, been able to piece together a web presence, business collateral and local reputation for getting a quality job done for our clients.

Of course, making enough revenue to pay the bills, and continue to plan for the future also helps, and for that I thank my clientelle.

What’s next?  Well, those who know me will let you know that I have a hard time keeping still.  And this is the main drive for this year at xLerate.  Over the next twelve months, planned actions will occur, to assist xLerate in bringing more quality to both our own clients and Salesforce.com users globally, as well as hopefully allow us as owners, professionals and people to grow as well.

As a first step, xLerate has applied for, and been accepted as a member of the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation, or OCRI as it is known locally. We hope that this membership will increase our visibility in the local business community, and personally, I hope to be able to learn much from executives who have successfully paved their own successes previously.  We also will tie our commitment to the Salesforce Foundation through activities to charities that are tied to the Ottawa area (such as OttawaReads).

Of course, other plans are ‘perculating’ … as things become a reality, I will be sure to share them here!  Until then, thank you to all of our clients, colleagues, friends and most importantly my wife Stephanie and kids for making this first year such a resolute success!