A Glimpse of an Amazing 2017 - Our Journey to Go Beyond Disruption
It’s not quite the end of 2017 but as we are hitting our busiest and exciting months yet, and I found a spare 5 minutes I wanted to share a glimpse of our year, our achievements, and how excited we are for 2018. With further new innovative products lined up and great foundations laid over the last 12 months we are very much ready to fly high….. and as our game was being first to market in insurance inspections I make no apologies for being one of the first to do their end of year review.
In January we set our main focus on domestic and commercial roof inspections and the occasional flood footage. We focused our business on the initial and obvious needs of our customers in a reactive market 'bringing quick and fair closure to claims whilst remaining cost effective'. We have been hugely successful as we are on target to blast through our growth targets with a 400% uplift on 2016 business levels and a 6X increase in contracts secured. I am very proud of what our team has achieved.
Have we done this by sticking to our plan in January? Of course not! We are now winning business in areas we had not even started trading in at the start of the year such is our rate of development. Our challenge is to constantly innovate as failing to do so will most definitely leave us behind. Technology advances so rapidly a ‘disruptor can easily become the disrupted’. We are very aware that technology is a solution - the real driver for disruption is a failure to enhance the products and services for our customers who constantly want more.
In the world of intelligent image analysis, which is our real purpose, using an amazing drone service network to obtain high quality images, I believe we are going beyond disrupting. We are creating new ways of working and opening up entirely new sectors of activity - more of a revolution than a disruption! Exciting times for sure.
Seeing a product before an industry sees it themselves is far from easy. It’s been a year of knock backs from traditionalists with closed thinking but one where our tenacity and resilience has been stretched to the full making it feel even more rewarding to achieve success. It is so exciting looking into the future knowing that by provoking different thought processes and attitudes we can make life better for our customer’s customers.
We are rightly proud of the pilots, their USPs and market leading status, but mindful that drones are not a new technology…. according to Wikipedia the earliest record was The Austrian Balloons in 1849! They have certainly progressed over time, especially the last 12 months after a somewhat slow 165+ year incubation. The data we are getting is increasingly more sophisticated and by recognising this we are able to combine it with intelligence that turns data into new and different products and introduces us all to new ways to undertake inspections in the future.
Whilst insurance is only a part of our future target markets, a number of insurers are now focused on introducing preventative measures for their customers and getting real payback benefits they can pass on to customers - discounted products for a healthy lifestyle, safer driving through the use of black boxes in cars, and less water damage risk in homes with leak prevention in water heating systems. For 2018 I expect us to make an exciting break through in the prevention sector too. Watch this space….
What else does 2018 hold for Iprosurv? Well we have big plans but know from last year that being fleet of foot to new opportunities is key and by Easter we may well be on plan version 3. Innovation, flexibility, tencacity, growth, professionalism and fun are the most important words in our plan and we look forward to achieving success on those fronts with many of you too.