So you think you know KANA? What a Difference a Year Makes!
The roots of our company stretch back more than 20 years, in fact, almost a quarter century. Some people remember KANA as an email response management company, which you can read more about in our CMO, James Norwood?s recent post ?KANA? Aren?t they the email management company?? Others think of KANA as synonymous with sophisticated agent-based knowledge management or perhaps even for live chat. Well 10 years ago that was probably a fair assumption, but that?s not who or what KANA is today.
I have been with KANA for three years now as CEO, and in that time I and the rest of the team at KANA have worked diligently to transform a business with great fundamentals (and a customer base to die for) into the KANA Software of today ? a vibrant, growing, and global business with more than 700 employees around the world supporting some 900 customers in both the commercial and public sectors ? with a mandate to be the undisputed leader for customer service software and related services.
How did we get here?
I want to keep this blog short so I?ll focus on 2012 and what has perhaps been our most transformative 12 months as a company, to provide you with just a glimpse into our business momentum and progress. In January we launched a brand new website at www.kana.com which has received a great deal of complimentary feedback and continues to draw tens of thousands of unique new visitors every month. KANA?s website is also home to this Customer Experience Management blog, which we take a great deal of pride in. Wide ranging, sometimes entertaining, occasionally provocative, but we hope always valuable ? we welcome your feedback.
In February of this year we brought together our world field operations in Santa Monica, California so that we could outline our company vision and set clear objectives for all. What was special about that event is that we had customers attend as well, and they presented as to why they selected KANA, how they were using us within their business and their plans for the future.
In April of this year, we realized a long term aim to deliver end-to-end customer service solutions to mid-sized businesses from the cloud. Today, we?re offering our KANA Express and Lagan Express software-as-service (SaaS) solutions to businesses right around the world from Australia to The Netherlands, and from the United Kingdom to the United States, and we?re seeing real demand for a solution backed by a company with more than two decades of enterprise-class customer service experience ? brought to mid-sized businesses and smaller public sector entities. We knew this was an under served segment of the market and it?s one where feature rich, rapid to implement, pay-as-you-go, end-to-end customer service suites are the expectation.
In June of this year, we succeeded in bringing together two incredibly complementary businesses: KANA and Ciboodle and in doing so were able to accelerate each company?s stated product roadmap by some 12 to 18 months. Six months on we?re definitely one company with one culture and we?re close to delivering convergence of the best that each of these companies had to offer ? in the next release of our single KANA Enterprise customer service suite ? to help our customers deliver on their customer experience management initiatives and objectives.
In September and October we presented to and engaged with some 500 KANA Customers at our annual customer summit event: KANA Connect, which took place in each of Las Vegas, London, and The Hague. Although KANA Connect offers tremendous educational value through fabulous keynote speakers, analyst panels, and hands on product labs; what?s the most exciting thing for KANA and our customers is the fact that close to 50% of content and sessions are prepared and presented by customers to customers.
In November we cut the ribbon at and formerly opened our palatial new European Headquarters in the historic Titanic Quarter of Belfast, which is rapidly becoming the newest high tech hot bed in the UK. We needed the space as we?ve grand plans that need delivering and we are growing. ?We?re looking for the brightest in business to join our teams, hiring developers not just in Northern Ireland, but in our engineering centers of excellence such as Glasgow in Scotland, and at our worldwide headquarters in Sunnyvale (Silicon Valley) California.
As the year draws to a close, we?re seeing the fruits of these and other efforts too numerous to mention. We?re winning new contracts, we?re bringing customers live on mission critical business transformational projects as well as first time cross-channel customer service in the cloud, and we?ve substantial product releases planned for our entire portfolio serving all customers.
Finally, and perhaps most rewarding, our customers are enjoying a real return on investment from their partnership with KANA and have a clear understanding of their future with our company. We at KANA thank each and every one of you for your business and your continued loyalty.
Is it all a bed of roses? Of course not, and as a customer service software company focused on the customer experience we know better than most that the work is never done. But what a year it?s been.
Roll on 2013!
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- Happy New Year?
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