Thank you to everybody who attended our 7th Annual User Conference earlier this month. It was a great success, filled with exceptional speakers, lessons and feedback.
CEO, Kevin Philips shared the amazing consistent growth and success of the past few years, from revenue to the variety of industries we serve to our client base itself.
This also included the exciting news that the IDU brand is no longer an exclusively South African brand; with idu-Concept being marketed and sold globally through independent distributors in Southern Africa, East Africa, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, the United Kingdom and Europe.
After reviewing where we have been, Kevin then took us through the coming attractions clients can expect this year. The goal for September seeing the addition of Event-based budgeting, Enhanced Views export into Excel, New Widgets, 5 Year comparatives, a Property Module and Graphical Top-down budgeting.
We hosted four guest speakers this year; veteran journalist, political commentator and newspaper columnist Max du Preez; corporate speaker and mentalist Gilan Gork; and sponsors, founder of J2 Software John Mc Loughlin and CEO of Fraxion, Stanton Jandrell.
Max took us through some South African history, and examined the upheavals we have seen in our political climate of late. He then turned these heavy events on their head a little, highlighting the positives that he predicts will come from it. He also pointed out that no matter how bad things may seem, we should consider that – unlike most other countries in the world – South Africa is resilient; we are a country with no regional tension, no religious fundamentalism, no terrorism and no heavy military presence overseeing the civil government. The end result? Encouraging faith and belief in South Africa, which he believes is facing a new order – a post-Zuma society.
Gilan Gork had everybody eating out of his hand within minutes. While mentalism and learning about body language is always highly entertaining and Gilan is very dynamic; the skills he imparted had everybody nodding (unless that was just contagious nodding we never picked up on). In all seriousness though, we will be unpacking a few of the techniques he shared in a separate post and we highly recommend him for corporate functions.
John from J2 Software touched on (insider risk and it’s potential cost for your company).
Stanton from Fraxion had the audience engaged in his walk through of spend management and all it can bring to your business.
One of the highlights for us was undoubtedly listening to our idu users share their experiences of working with us and bringing their team on board with the adoption of idu-Concept to their organisations. The passion and enthusiasm they brought to their presentations made us incredibly proud of our team and our products.
Monty Stephenson, FD of Cape Consumers was most impressed by the consistency, knowledge, experience and understanding of their business from the idu Software team – from the CEO to the support staff. You can also find more of his thoughts here.
Andre Rossouw from Medipost, a recent addition to our client base, spoke with great sincerity and detail about their experience with idu and the implementation of idu-Concept.
An Field from Business Partners spoke highly of the belief and passion our staff have for our products, particularly Geoff ten Oever. She also elaborated on how once she was “sold” on the product, she became as passionate about selling the product on to her team. We love that our passion is catching.
The gorgeous Vineyard Hotel venue and food (and special coffee machine) were much commented on by all our guests. And of course great fun was had at our gala dinner; you can find all the photographic proof on our Facebook page, so be sure to pop over and leave your comments.
Our new 2-half-days’ format was positively received and worked out really well for everybody. We are already looking forward to seeing you all back again next year!