Is it the end of the year already?!!
This year has flown by faster than any I've know before it and
as my body slowly recovers from yet another evening of seasonal
over-indulgence it occurs to me that Team Blix has done quite a bit
this year of which I'm immensely proud.
Although most people wouldn't know it…
You see, as many of those who know us will confirm, we're quite
a quiet bunch at Blix HQ and it rarely occurs to us to shout about
what we've done or achieved.
So, as much as it doesn't come naturally I'm going to review
2013 and who knows, I may even be tempted to shout about it
too…
A Magnificent Seven
I don't mind saying it: we've got a great team at Blix, not only
are we all properly skilled at what we do but we get along so well
that I look forward to coming to work each day; I'm extremely
grateful for that.
The team continues to grow and with the addition of Jamie to our
Online Marketing division and Nicky as Operations Manager we now
have a full time team of seven that along with some amazing
strategic partners have enabled us to continue to expand our client
base and services offering in the Channel Islands, UK and
USA.
Nurturing Guernsey's Creative People
I've been working as part of the Creative Industries Guernsey
(CIG) Committee. I'm genuinely proud of the work this great
group of people are doing and I'm pleased that we're really
starting to see increased recognition of the importance of the
Creative Industries to Guernsey's economy.
CIG has been involved in a few initiatives already this year
including the first Creative Industries Symposium which this year
was titled Learn / Create / Produce and featured some fascinating
keynote speakers. More importantly for me though was seeing a
wide selection of the islands' creative businesses all in one room
and I really hope that events such as these help to promote more
collaboration within our industry. I believe it would yield
some impressive results.
Blix is also involved with the Creative Academy, a unique
apprenticeship scheme created by CIG that is designed to help
nurture creative talent locally. We currently have Sarah
Snell, a student on the scheme working with us, who is already
doing some great work.
Good form, Home & Away
In addition to our existing clients, we've welcomed a number of
well-regarded local businesses this year including Source
Recruitment, Kemp Le Tissier, Watts and Co, Asset Risk Consultants,
Visit Guernsey, StartUp Guernsey and OSA Recruitment to name just a
few.
2013 has also seen our US client portfolio continue to expand
significantly with a number of key new clients including FMC
Corporation, a multi-billion dollar global chemical company and
Main Line Health, a major east-coast health provider
network.
With a number of additional US based businesses currently in
negotiation with Blix to provide online marketing strategy and
associated digital services we're continuing to prove that Guernsey
can punch well above its weight and export creative and technical
services into extremely competitive global markets.
Ripened Phroot
We were a core part of the team behind the creation of a leading
edge, cloud based UK Payroll platform called Phroot. Blix
provided 2 of the 3 founding partners, incubation space, the
technical, design and user interface builds, during several years
of extremely hard work. Phroot went live in April 2013 -
immediately making waves in a market not traditionally renowned for
attractive and easy-to-use applications - providing one of the
first, fully web-based automated integrations with HMRC's new RTI
reporting gateways.
In July 2013 Phroot was acquired by IRIS, one of the UK's
leading business software companies, and is now known as IRIS OpenPayroll. We're extremely proud
of what we've achieved and we look forward to seeing where IRIS,
with their market leading knowledge of the UK Payroll space, take
it.
It was an exciting ride being involved with such an ambitious
start-up and it pushed our team's knowledge of delivering Software
as a Service (Saas) further than we could have imagined.
What's next?
I believe that there's never been a more exciting time to be
working in the online space; it's evolving quicker and is more
important to business success than ever before.
We've been planning for 2014 for a while now and are looking
forward to continuing to craft lovely online experiences and
successful marketing strategies; we're also looking forward to
releasing some new products and services throughout the course of
the next 12 months.
We're pleased that we'll be running a Code Club at
Vale Primary School in 2014, it's a great concept that's already
being run successfully at Amherst and something we believe should
be rolled out in more island schools.
Seasons Greetings
All that's left is for me, on behalf of Team Blix, to wish
our clients, strategic partners, friends and families a very Merry
Christmas and a happy, healthy and rewarding 2014.
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