We at FinoComp started the year with the catastrophic Australian bush fires that came within 20 kms of our Jamberoo Office. Later in the year it was floods. Then we, like the world, had to endure the impacts of COVID-19, the worst global pandemic in a century. We have all been challenged this year with lockdown, isolation, remote working and ensuring our metal health. It has been a year that we will all want to forget but it will be a year that we will all remember vividly.
It is the grim times like 2020 that bring out the best in the human spirit. The resilience shown by our staff and our clients to carry on with the job while the world was in the grips of this pandemic has been extraordinary.
There are many things that stand out to me:
- Our ability to move to remote working overnight was sensational and the ability to maintain development velocity admirably;
- We have managed to grow our workforce, including the onboarding staff both locally and from abroad throughout the pandemic;
- Our management and HR team have had constant focus on everyone’s wellbeing and been so innovative around ensuring communication and interaction, albeit remotely. We again won the local Workplace culture awards in recognition of this wonderful work;
- Tough times brings out that sense of community, compassion and charity. This has happened in spades this year and we have contributed to various charities including our local fire team, our local emergency service workers and in funding campaigns to deal with the local problems of suicide amongst our youth;
- Our clients have worked collaboratively with us through this year and, while not all projects went ahead as planned, we were able to make some very significant product upgrades and have commenced on some very important product directions;
- Our parent company Bravura Solutions have been so supportive during this period and have really focused on aligning our group strategy, integrating FinoComp into the group and, as great tech companies do, funded strategic research and development. This will stand us in excellent stead coming out of the COVID clouds.
As the year comes to a close we see green shoots of hope with vaccines and confidence starting to appear. Our sincere hope is that we get back to some kind of normality (although normality will be different after COVID). We will come out of this with a larger team, an improved technology base, and with new products that will make next year stronger than ever.
Sincere thanks to all of our staff for their stoic determination and to all our customers for their continued support for 2020.
Ray Tubman – MD FinoComp
