How Navigating Adversity Prepares Us for Opportunity

A letter from Gabe Damiani, ivision CEO & Founder

At the beginning of this year, ivision was at a point of inflection. Our business was coming off a record year of growth — marching toward a new revenue model, grooming our next generation of leaders and preparing to celebrate the company’s 16th birthday.

Then things took a dramatic turn, and everyone on the planet was suddenly at an inflection point. In early March, the COVID-19 crisis transformed our 150-person company into an entirely remote workforce for the first time ever. Many of our clients launched emergency operations plans, enlisting us in the effort. The global economy screeched to a halt.

Now we — as a company, community and country — are slowly, cautiously putting our foot back on the accelerator. Certainly, we’ll keep feeling the shock waves of this crisis for months, if not years. But I’m also feeling inspired.

Growing amid the new normal

Throughout this unprecedented time, our ivision team has navigated challenges with competence and confidence. Our technology and business-continuity expertise has become even more valuable to clients, and we’ve worked hard to provide the help they need.

Much of the strategy we mapped out for 2020, before we had ever heard of COVID, fits what we need in this altered business landscape. Here are the three company objectives we laid out for this year:

• Smart Business: Achieve predictable profitability by building a strong base of full-service clients that produce strong financial results.
• Work Smarter: Provide best-in-class service to our customers through efficient use of our systems, processes and security frameworks.
• Best Company: Be the preferred choice in the IT Services industry by having the best company culture and thoughtful solutions that earn clients for life.

Over the last few weeks, our ivision team signed new clients, onboarded a large managed services customer and broke our first-quarter goal for consulting services utilization. And we accomplished all this while working in the new normal: conducting all of our business online, home-schooling our kids and connecting to loved ones via virtual coffee chats and happy hours.

Agility, resilience come through again

I am not surprised by what ivision’s people have accomplished. Our entrepreneurial spirit got us through the Great Recession. Back then, we were smaller, which gave us flexibility as business changed. Today, our team is more than double the size it was a decade ago, yet we’ve proven that we are just as agile and resilient.

Our vision and strategy are more relevant than ever. Our long-term strengths have been essential to weathering this crisis:

• Amazing culture and clients
• Recurring revenue and profitability
• Strong security platform
• Cross-team problem solving
• Customer-centric approach

Moving forward with greater focus

I believe ivision will capitalize on the strengths — strategy, execution, influence and relationship building — that each employee brings to our company. I believe we have learned important lessons. We will let go of minutiae. We will move forward with a greater focus on what really matters.

Our people have demonstrated their ability to navigate risk and uncertainty. Now, we’re ready to embrace the opportunities that lie ahead.