CEO Wrap-Up: 5 Things We Learned in 2022

It has been an exciting and successful year for Next Technik. The company hit new heights for revenue generation, hiring, growth, and engagement. On top of that, our core product, Next Service, evolved in exciting and essential ways while getting into the hands of over 10,000 people in the field. Recession fears, supply chain delays, and talent shortages have made this year a struggle for many companies. And while Next Technik has not been immune, we have found ways to overcome obstacles en route to having our best year. 

We are incredibly proud of what we have accomplished throughout 2022. Thank you to everyone who shares in Next Technick’s vision to elevate field service and drive customer engagement using superior field service management (FSM) software. That list includes all the field service providers who trust our FSM software to help run their businesses and all the technicians who rely on our software to perform in the field. Our team (which is bigger and better than ever) also deserves much credit for helping our company mature so much in the last 12 months. Your feedback will continue to inform product improvements and enhancements coming in 2023. 

It has become our custom to review the year before offering a preview of our plans for the coming year. We wanted to take a slightly different approach this year. In light of how much our company, team, and software evolved in 2022, we wanted to highlight some lessons we learned.

Preserving the Culture is Key

We grew faster than ever in 2022. The size of the company more than doubled in 12 months, including: 

• Expansions into Europe.
• Major additions to our leadership team.
• Rapid growth in our staff.
• Relationships with new channel partners.

The company looks drastically different at the end of the year than it did at the beginning – but our culture and core values remain the same.

This culture drives everything we do, from product to service to strategy. And it has been key to our success from our earliest days until now. Our team strives to deliver real solutions, meaningful value, and lasting change to every user through innovative products and exemplary professional services. 

It would have been easy to lose sight of this fact as the company expanded onto new continents and experienced high growth this past year. Instead, our culture is stronger than ever. We’ve done this by recruiting people who share our values. Likewise, we have put our values at the center of our global strategy rather than trying to retrofit them later. 

Scale Must Include Support

Our company has undergone rapid growth, not just this year but for multiple years running. As the scale of our staff, product, customer base, and footprint have expanded, we have learned the importance of scaling support at the same pace. We have also learned the importance of scaling support processes to fit the worldwide reach of our company and customer base. 

Service and support have always been critical to our culture and values. We are dedicated to improving the Next Technik customer experience through continued investment in our support team. Enhanced customer support services will be a key priority in 2023. This will include developing closer relationships with our partners, who are already beginning to deliver services for our product at a very high standard. 

Improvements Should Always Have an Impact 

Our Next Service software received some exciting updates this year, which encouraged us to think about the difference between real improvements and flashy (but shallow) bells and whistles. We learned a lot on the way to making our flagship product more accessible and impactful than before.

The most significant change was to the mobile UI. Design enhancements streamlined the look and feel of the mobile product based on feedback we received from technicians using it in the field, making it easier for them to get their work done. We also added dynamic forms presenting options and inputs based on logic, simplifying the field service process for many of our customers.

We also launched our new Recurrence feature, which allows our customers to easily create recurring cases and tasks based on an initial set of parameters set by the user. This has drastically simplified the scheduling process for businesses that must meet their customers’ ongoing obligations.

 Finally, we cemented our partnership with Versapay to enable payments in the field. 

These improvements, combined with Next Service’s unique on-platform orientation within NetSuite, make it one of the premier FSM products on the market. Get excited for other enhancements to happen throughout 2023, such as an improved scheduling experience for larger workforces and usability improvements to the schedule board.

Leaders Rise to the Occasion

We entered this year confident we could expand and improve on many things. But plans are always uncertain, and much can go wrong during execution. Fortunately, we’re performing great by all metrics that matter to a SaaS company. That’s due in no small part to the additions we’ve made to our leadership team, which has never been stronger. 

We have leaders in all key roles and teams representing all critical functions of a software-as-a-service company. This includes several new team segments and members, such as support engineering, technical writing, operations, customer activation, and partner enablement. Additionally, we’ve expanded digital, content, and partner marketing functions.

The impact of our leadership this year has emphasized how much decision-makers either make or break success. The last few years have been turbulent for everyone. Companies have had to adapt to an endless cycle. Whether they have become stronger, this change comes down to the leaders in charge. 

We’ve seen this firsthand. We’ve also observed that talent alone isn’t enough to excel at leadership. People also need tools that make them more efficient and informed, first by automating time-consuming and error-prone processes and second by putting more data and better insights at their disposal. Success gets closer to certainty with the right tools in the right hands. 

The Future of Field Service is Complicated

Since we work with many service providers across locations, sizes, and industry verticals, we have a unique perspective on where the industry is now and where it’s headed in 2023. 

Something we learned in 2022 is that recessions, whether real or imagined, affect providers differently. Those that install new equipment have seen businesses dry up, in some cases, as people delay new equipment purchases until the economic outlook improves. Break-fix service providers have seen the opposite. Servicing equipment is still essential and less expensive than replacement, so people are still calling technicians at the same clip. It has been a good year for some and a bad year for others, and we expect that to continue. 

The green economy, for example, creates both opportunities and obligations for providers to deliver new types of services. Likewise, the increasing demand for predictive maintenance opens doors to providers who can enable it and closes doors to providers who can’t. We expect the field service industry to grow, mature, and evolve—but success isn’t guaranteed for anyone. We will remain on our toes in 2023 and encourage all providers to do the same. 

An Important Year Ahead for Next Service

The year ahead will look similar to the one just finished. We expect to double in size again. We plan to improve the core product further. Our channel network will continue to expand and mature, and our team will do the same. The lessons we learned this year helped us devise a successful formula for continued growth in the future. 

We want to thank all those who made 2022 our best year in history. From the 10,000 technicians using our mobile app to the worldwide providers running their businesses on our software, we appreciate your trust and feedback. To all the companies in our channel network, we are grateful for your partnership and for enabling us to scale successfully. Finally, we appreciate the entire Next Technik team, whose hard work, fresh thinking, and inspired attitude took our company to new heights this year. 

Thank you to everyone. Together, let’s prosper in 2023.