Over the holidays I read James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits. I was struck by his core thesis:
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
His point is that achieving results has less to do with your goals and much more to do with the systems you establish to achieve your goals. This is a time of year when many of us are setting goals, both personal and professional, so his point of view is particularly provocative. Here at AQ, our focus for 2020 is on systems that will improve our ability to be a great partner to our customers and enable our customers to run better businesses.
When it comes to the former, we are deploying internal systems that will make us a more efficient company and one that is easier with which to do business. We just recently deployed Salesforce as our CRM and NetSuite as our ERP. We are now integrating them together so we have a clear view of our customers, which in turn, allows us to be much more responsive to them. We are creating online knowledgebases that will allow you to optimize your use of AQ. And soon, we will be unveiling a new website that should tell the AQ story more effectively for both our current customers and the FES constituents who are not yet our customers.
When it comes to systems that enable our customers, we are working on a variety of offerings. For dealers, our focus is on extending beyond the priced-quotation to help simplify the order management process and create seamless access to value-added services like equipment financing and freight transportation. For manufacturers, our focus is on simplifying the management of product data and helping them get their products noticed. For all our customers, we are working on a set of productized APIs to enhance the ability to access AQ data.
We would love to hear from you about what systems on which you think AQ could have the most impact. We are looking forward to an exciting 2020; following is a look back at some highlights from 2019 here.
With best regards,
Jim Contardi
CEO, AQ