What an amazing week for Open Sky Group!  

What an amazing week for Open Sky Group!

Today, Thursday 14-FEB-2019, our company officially turned 13 years old!  While this is an amazing achievement in and of itself; there is much more to celebrate than entering our teenage years.

This week Open Sky Group achieved significant global recognition from JDA Software during the annual sales kickoff meeting in Las Vegas.  Our first accomplishment was in Asia Pacific (APAC) where the joint Open Sky Group and FourPL teams were recognized as the runner up for the Selling Partner of the Year award in APAC.   Can you believe that our relatively small companies were the #2 sales partner in all of APAC?

We are clearly doing something right here and this is due to the hard work of our global sales team and especially the boots on the ground efforts of Anthony Hawkins of Open Sky Group PTY LTD and Brett Findlay and Chris Poulton of FourPL PTY LTD.   Well done gentlemen and you have amazing teams behind you!

Our second accomplishment was in North America.  I was very surprised when Ken Carpenter of JDA put up the Top Selling Partner of the Year finalists for North America and we were on the slide!   That alone made me very proud to just receive the recognition that we are one of the top selling partners in all North America; however, when the next slide appeared, and it was only our logo on the slide; I was elated!   Amazing to once again be recognized as the top selling partner of JDA Software in North America!

Of course, this would not have been achieved without the extreme hard work and dedication of Chad Kramlich, Shannon Caflisch, Jason Yantiss and Mike Noble who chased and pursued deals that were recognized by JDA as partner sold or influenced; and let us not forget all our JDA friends, such as the CE’s, in every deal as well as special recognition for Steve Simmerman who would not take no for an answer when we needed to get creative.    I’d also like to give special recognition to Jeremy Hudson and Susan Estes for all the demos of JDA software they did in 2018 and continue to do in 2019.    And of course many of our sales start with Eric Neff registering and qualifying a lead and those leads are frequently the result of all the consistent and persistent work done by Darcy Reeves.

Thirdly, our last accomplishment was something I’ve wanted to achieve since 2013 when Darcy Reeves and I attended the first partner meeting at JDA FOCUS in Orlando.   Ken Carpenter called out several partners and asked them to come up on stage and participate in a surprise panel discussion.  I was certain we would not be called up, based on the size of the partners that were called first, like KPMG; however, when it looked like Ken was done he asked, “Where is Curt” and I realized we were going to be one of those prestigious partners to be called up on stage and held as examples of the best partners of JDA Software.

I should also mention that while this was going on, Anthony Hawkins and Brett Findlay were pulled out of our meeting to be brought up on stage for a panel discussion for APAC which was great visibility in front of all the JDA CE’s who work the APAC region.

While these awards and recognition were based on sales, do not for one moment think that we could have earned these awards without everyone in our collective organizations doing what is right for our customers, our strategic partners, and our companies every day.

Everyone needs to celebrate these accomplishments and be incredibly proud of what we have achieved together and the culture we are building in this high-performance organization.  I ask no matter where you are this or next week you make sure to share our success with your customers, families and friends.   Thank them all please!    Share our social media posts and let everyone know that you were a part of this continued success!

Also, if you are with your fellow Open Sky Group family members, take some time to celebrate and raise a glass to being part of the team that is crushing everyone else with our results.  Don’t worry, I’ll cover the expenses if you get in trouble.  Just take some time to really think about what it means to be part of a team that is accomplishing things that organizations ten times our size are not able to do.

Thank you for an amazing 2018 and there are more good things to come in 2019.    My next weekly update will summarize all the exciting things we learned at JDA GKO.

Curt