“What gets measured gets managed.” My guess is that most of you have heard this one before. Few truer words have been spoken. This is a philosophy that we embrace here at AtTask. I spent a lot of time with the executive team over the past few months identifying the most important metrics and results that will move our business forward. This was done after diving in to understand the current state of our business, how we compare to other companies in our industry (i.e. B2B SaaS companies) as well as with our strategic priorities.

Importantly, it is just as critical to prioritize what we measure so that we do not attempt to manage too many numbers at once. I have another saying – “If everything is a priority then nothing is a priority.”

With this in mind I wanted to introduce you to our approach to numbers management. As you will see, we are not simply focused on the “bottom line” or reducing costs. We are looking to build a great company that is scalable and is providing meaningful value to our clients and this means we will have a range of items that we track. In the end we will be financial successful if we do the right things right. We have an extraordinary market opportunity in front of us and we will continue to invest in order to capture this opportunity.

Our process starts with a Company Dashboard. This is the highest level, top priority metrics that we will track. From there we have established a dashboard around the following three themes:

1. Indispensable to our clients
2. Profitable growth
3. Exceptional place to work

Today I will spend time on the Company Dashboard and will address the Themes in a future communication. For now it is important to know that the Themes Dashboard supports the Company Dashboard in a way that if you want to drill down to more detail for an area on the Company Dashboard then the Themes metrics will help to answer questions. Also, we have a process underway to set up team scorecards for each functional area in the company so that we can assure that each department is managing the details that will support our company objectives.

The key metrics for our Company Dashboard are

As you can see these metrics are spread across a wide range of important areas including – financial, client, sales, employees and our strategic MSG initiative. To further our focus we have identified our 4 core metrics that appear first in bold above. I will provide an overview of these four metrics today.

Annual Recurring Revenue or ARR tells us the current “run-rate” of our recurring subscription revenue, which is the lifeblood of any SaaS business. This year we have shifted away from the Total Bookings as our primary metric, thereby allowing us to ensure the proper focus on this critically important measurement. Essentially, ARR tells us what our recurring revenue would be for the next twelve months if we did not add or lose a single client. So it is a good baseline going into each month and quarter.

Our Total Revenue metric tells us how we are managing to our overall financial goals and most significantly includes our services revenue in addition to our recurring revenue. Total Revenue is the number that is reported on our Profit & Loss (P&L) statements each month. ARR represents a portion of this revenue as it shows up in the Subscription Revenue portion of the P&L each month as the contracted revenue is “recognized”. The goal is always to meet or exceed our budget for both ARR and Total Revenue and to grow these numbers by 40% or more each year.

Next is the Revenue Renewal and Upsell rate. This illustrates our ability to retain and grow our clients. So if we take the annual ARR renewal amount for our clients and add in any additional ARR (up-sell/follow-on) that we sell during the year and then subtract the reductions or cancellations we get an idea of how well we are doing at delivering value to our clients. It is very important to note that this metric is not simply tracked for financial reasons. In reality it is the best indication of our success in keeping our clients happy and for tracking the progress of our strategy. We are targeting to drive this number close to or above 100% going into 2013.

The last metric is Client Acquisition Costs or CAC. This takes into consideration the total sales & marketing costs to generate new ARR and predicts a payback period. The ideal target is a CAC of 1.0 or more. This means that it costs $1 to generate $1 in new ARR resulting in a payback of 1 year. Right now we are nowhere near this level and as a result this is a key area of focus for us. For 2012 we are realistically targeting to drive this number up close to .8 (i.e. $1.00 of spending gets us $.80 in new revenue) with the goal to move up to 1.0 in 2013.

I understand that this may be a lot of information to absorb but I think it is important that each employee understand this and think about what they can do to contribute each day.

If you have any questions feel free to post a comment here or send an email and I will answer it. Also, you can ask the management team or VP in your area as they should be able to explain these 4 key metrics as well as the others in further detail. Given that each of my direct reports now have their bonuses based upon these 4 metrics they have gotten very familiar with each one;)

Thanks

Eric

This week you received a message from Austin about our latest employee survey. Maybe you have completed it already but if not I would like to encourage you to do so prior to the deadline on April 9th. So let me start by thanking you for your participation.

With that said, I wanted to spend a few minutes to talk about the survey. You may be asking yourself – does it really make a difference? As you could imagine my answer is “Yes”! This is not just a survey coming from HR so that we can check the box and say we did it. My executive team and I will be reviewing this information in detail and moving forward on the feedback we receive as we have done with past surveys. We are implementing many actions, process and programs from the feedback we have recieved.

For example we are rolling out a performance review process and a career pathing program among other things – plus I am trying to figure out how we can get a bigger room for the pool table so that we don’t bang into the walls! Also, please know that it takes a little time to implement some of these changes so hang in there.

We want to make AtTask the best place to work in Utah! My goal is for each of you to walk into the office each day, look around and say “These are the best people in the business and I wouldn’t want to work anywhere else or with any other group of people.” Help us make that happen.

Thanks

Eric

Many years ago my friend Bill’s daughter, Sarah, decided that she wanted to become a ski jumper. If you’ve driven into Park City, you can’t miss the Nordic ski jumps at the Utah Olympic Park on your way in. While the ski jumps loom high over the area, it is hard to find very many kids who have taken up the sport. Most of them can be found at the terrain parks at the ski resorts – but not Sarah. Most days you will find her at the UOP training. After a while, Sarah got pretty good, and then she started to get really good. Sarah continued to pursue her passion for ski jumping even though there was not a definable path for women ski jumpers. Up to this time, the International Olympic Committee had determined that women ski jumping was not worthy of a spot in the Winter Olympics. Therefore, like other sports, there was not a strong international circuit for competitors and limited college scholarship opportunities (there is a Continental Tour in Europe where ski jumping is a major sport). No matter, this didn’t slow Sarah down as she pursued her sport with passion.

As you may already know, last year, the UOC approved women’s ski jumping to become an Olympic sport for the 2014 games. On the heels of this decision the World Cup circuit became a viable platform for women around the world to compete to determine the top jumpers. Although she is just 17 years old, this past December Sarah promptly won the first international competition by a wide margin despite the fact that, at the time, she was not even considered the best jumper from the USA! She has since won 6 of the 9 competitions on the circuit and last month she won the first ever women’s World Cup Ski Jumping Championship. Sarah is obviously considered a favorite for a medal at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

At no point have Sarah’s parents had to nag or push Sarah to train and practice for the sport. She simply possessed an innate drive to improve and excel at it.  Anyone who has ever taken (pick an instrument or sport) lessons knows that there is no amount of cajoling, bribing or pushing a parent can do to create this kind of outcome. The best results come from the individual and from within.

As a core value at AtTask, we want people who are unleashing their passion to improve and excel regardless of their role.  We can’t create a great company if we “just show up”. Each of us needs to strive everyday to be better than we were yesterday and to go above and beyond. We need to be better at our jobs, create better outcomes for our clients and for AtTask. And this is your responsibility not your managers and not the company’s. Yes, we are there to help and support each employee and to create an environment for success but it must start with the right individual desire. If we all do this, we can expect great things.

I am delighted to see people everyday at AtTask who are living this value and that enriches those around them. Just like Sarah, I hope you are passionately driving to improve and excel at what you do – for yourself, for AtTask and it’s clients and if not then ask yourself “Why?” and go find a way to make it happen!

I recently returned from a trip to Europe to visit with our EMEA team. It was a great trip and I wanted to share some information and thoughts after my visit.

First, it was very gratifying that my trip coincided with our recent move to the new office space in Basingstoke, UK. It is really exciting that we have had two major moves for the company into first class facilities that provide a great environment and a renewed sense of energy. In fact I feel as though, by creating a more engaging workplace, we have a wonderful opportunity to craft a whole new sense of identity for the employees that permeates everything we do including our brand.

One of the things that really struck me about my time with the employees was their passion for and commitment to AtTask and what we do. They provided tremendous feedback about their experiences in a market that covers 7 primary (tier 1) countries. We are also getting leads and opportunities in numerous other countries in the region as we now support 10 languages either directly or through partners. And the team is really growing – in total we have 22 people in the UK office. The trip emphasized for me that AtTask is truly a global company with nearly 175 clients across the Europe. In total, nearly 350 of our 1475 clients are located outside the US. I was also reminded that many of our US based clients have locations that are either already using our products or considering deployment in locations outside the US.

It takes time to establish a meaningful presence in a market that is 7-8 time zones away with such a diverse environment. AtTask has invested substantially in our global presence over the past several years and it is exciting to see the investment paying off. We are at a point where our EMEA operations are reaching critical mass and we have a great team to build on our past success.

With that said, we still have a lot to do in order to truly be seen as a major player in the global market – but the opportunity is there and we are well positioned. Among other things we need to build our brand awareness across Europe; continue to grow our client base in EMEA by solving their problems that we are best suited to solve and by ensuring our client’s success with our products for years to come; continue to provide product capabilities that meet their unique needs; expand our localization efforts across all aspects of our go-to-market and product; and by making globalization an integral part of everything we do here at AtTask and not just an afterthought.

Several members of the leadership team will be making trips to EMEA in the coming months and I plan to make regular trips as well and anticipate that we will be building greater knowledge and understanding of the challenges and opportunities provided by our ongoing global growth. I also look forward to visiting with our team in Armenia in the future and I am optimistic about our current opportunities in Australia/New Zealand and elsewhere over time. I can definitely say that it is great to be part of this global company with a terrific future.

It may surprise you that the answer is North Dakota. Yes, apparently the Great White North has found a lot of gas and there are plenty of jobs if you like pumping gas in -40 degree weather. I much prefer Utah and according to this article by NPR so do a lot of other people. As we grow and become better known I expect that we will be included in features such as this and I will be happy to share my enthusiasm for living and working in Utah.

AtTask,

It certainly is an exciting time at AtTask. Many of you have told me how great it is to be in the new building and that it has created a whole new working environment…for the better. I couldn’t agree more. I want to make sure and once again thank our teammates who made it happen. It’s impressive that we can move 200+ people, all of our “stuff” and technology over a weekend with very minimal interruption of our business. Great job!

The Vision

Let’s continue our dialogue on the AtTask vision. You were first introduced to it at the all hands meeting a couple of weeks ago. Don’t be concerned if you feel like you haven’t fully grasped it’s meaning – this will come in time as will your ability to understand how you can contribute. For now, it’s my hope that you agree we have a compelling vision and it sets AtTask on a course that will help us be an exceptional place to work and will allow us to have a tremendous impact on businesses worldwide.

Speaking of making businesses work better. As our core purpose, this should provide the basis for everything we do – today and for years into the future. If it sounds general and non-specific– it is! This is because we want a fundamental guidepost to direct us over a very long time. If we are always asking ourselves, ”Are we helping to make businesses work better?” and the answer is “yes”—we know we are on the right track.

All great companies started small and remained focused on a simple core purpose. So like 3M, whose purpose is, “To solve unsolved problems innovatively” or Merck, who wants to “Preserve and enhance human life” or Disney, who simply wants to “Make people happy”, we at AtTask are here to “Make businesses work better”.

As a global company this means that we will find ways to make this purpose a reality across a wide range of business settings. Every day, I get more energized by the potential that we have to so this.

As you think about our Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) – “to have a measureable impact on the effectiveness of knowledge workers worldwide “– hopefully you get a sense of how big a deal this is. It might be helpful to expand upon the ideas behind this BHAG. To be clear, this is not about selling a bunch more clients or simply growing our revenues – this will be a natural outcome of our efforts. We are actually out to change the way businesses think about managing knowledge work. Organizations will have a whole new level of accountability and outcomes because of what we do. For example, in the future I would like to see that AtTask has impacted the work of teams of knowledge workers in the same way that Salesforce.com impacted sales organizations. Further, AtTask will improve the efficiencies and effectiveness of knowledge workers in the same way factories, warehouses and supply chains have seen radical improvements through technology over the past 20 years!

I hope that helps. As always, I look forward to hearing from you and welcome your comments and questions as we continue to role out and unleash our vision and strategy in the weeks and months ahead. Here is one final thought to bring our core purpose and vision into focus:

We don’t make business work better so that we can make money; we make money so that we can help more businesses work better!

Important Announcement
Organization Changes
January 5, 2012

In order to position AtTask to become a major force in the enterprise software world I am implementing several new initiatives and organizational changes to allow us to maximize the opportunity before us. As previously noted, the leadership team will be laying out our long term vision and our shorter term goals and objectives at the all-hands meeting on January 23rd at Thanksgiving Point. This will include communications associated with our vision, mission, values and strategies for achieving success along with key initiatives for our employees and organizational development.

I envision AtTask becoming not only the best technology company in Utah and in our traditional space (PPM) but to be among the most admired companies in the industry. This will not be accomplished by accepting things as they are – we will have to reimagine things as they can be. This will impact everything we do from the products we build and the services we offer to the way we structure our organization, go-to-market approach and provide value to our clients.

Here are the changes that are effective as of today. More details will be forthcoming and as always, you can talk to your respective manager if you have any questions:

Human Resources Elevated

I am pleased to announce that Austin Miller will now be reporting directly to me. I have had the pleasure of working with Austin over the past few months and believe that he is a highly capable HR leader. As you will see, the development of our employees, culture and work climate will be a major area of focus in 2012 and beyond. I look forward to continuing my work with Austin and his HR team to make AtTask a truly great place to work.

New Worldwide Sales Leadership

We have very ambitious growth plans over the next several years and these plans call for continued expansion of our US business as well our global market share. In addition we will explore other potential channels and partnerships for bringing our product to market. In order to achieve these levels of success I have decided to bring on a SVP of Worldwide Sales and have started a process to recruit for this position. Karl Clegg and Trevor Ward will be reporting to this individual and I expect that we will expand this organization throughout the year.

New Target Market Business Unit Formed

Ironically, one of the best ways for AtTask (or any technology company) to achieve profitable growth is by focusing our efforts to the meet the specific needs of target market segments with common challenges that our products and services are able to address. With this in mind, the executive team has spent substantial time over the past few months to better understand areas of opportunity where we can really impact a group of clients and users. You will be interested to know that we have determined that we will initially focus our efforts on Marketing Departments within large corporations. You can expect to hear more details on this in the weeks and months ahead.

In order to make this effort successful we will need to focus resources from all areas of the entire organization. This should not be confused as a short-term sales & marketing initiative, it is a major, multi-year investment with big ambitions and will accordingly require a big commitment starting with strong leadership. For this reason, I am very excited to announce that Nate Bowler will be moving into the newly formed position as General Manager of Targeted Markets reporting to me. Nate has been tasked with determining the optimal go-to-market approach for penetrating marketing departments of the largest corporations in the US and building a world-class team to attack this opportunity. He will have 100% support of the executive team and me as he launches this new Business Unit.  Nate’s move into this role is ideal for AtTask as we immediately gain an experienced and highly knowledgeable leader in a critical role while providing Nate with well-deserved career advancement and growth after serving in his current role for nearly 10 years.

New CTO

As a result of Nate’s new responsibilities I am immediately beginning a search for a new CTO at AtTask. Nate, who has been instrumental in the success that AtTask has achieved to date, will play a key role in recruiting the new CTO. My goal is to have this position filled by the end of Q1 with a highly experienced technology leader. As this recruiting process is underway, Nate will continue to serve in the role of interim CTO will full responsibilities for his current organization until this role is filled.

New Marketing and Product Management Organization Formed

In order to optimize our efforts and align our go-to-market message and approach, we will be creating a new organization under Bryan Nielson. In Bryan’s new position as SVP of Marketing and Product Management, Bryan will be responsible for product direction, product marketing, corporate marketing, lead generation and branding. In addition to the current team that Bryan manages, the existing marketing management team will report to him. Also, as part of this change, the Sales Development Reps under Craig Wendler will report to Bryan allowing the Marketing organization to take responsibility for delivering Qualified Sales Opportunities to the sales team.

As part of this change, Jeff Allen will be leaving the organization effective immediately. Along with the rest of the executive team and all of you, I would like to thank Jeff for his nearly two years of distinguished service to AtTask and we are confident that he will be very successful in his future endeavors.

I am confident that these changes will have a tremendous impact on the future success of AtTask and look forward to implementing these plans as quickly as possible. In addition, I am sure that you will have a lot of questions so please let me know what is on your mind by sending an email or stopping by to chat if we have a few minutes. Also, you should seek out your respective executive if needed.
Otherwise, I will see all of you on the 23rd of January as we launch the next chapter in the AtTask story.

Eric Morgan
President & CEO
AtTask

AtTaskers,

Happy New Year and welcome to 2012! I hope everyone had a great holiday with friends and family. Many of you were working hard right up to the last day of the year and I appreciate all your efforts and the great results we have achieved.  Hopefully you found some down time in the midst of the year-end push and are getting ready for more great things in 2012. I am personally looking forward to 2012 with great anticipation and expectations.

As an emerging player in the enterprise software world, AtTask is at a pivotal point in our history. We are in the process of transitioning ourselves from our early days as a start-up where we were focused on establishing the company as a viable player in the market to now becoming a business that is having a meaningful impact in the world and is able to scale and grow. The journey ahead will be quite different but no less challenging.  Given the enormous hurdles that every start-up company faces and the sheer odds stacked against it, our ability to not only survive but to thrive is truly impressive and all of you should be proud of your contributions and accomplishments.

Once the final numbers are tallied up over the next few weeks we will report very impressive results indeed. As a company with nearly $25 million in revenues, over 250 employees and sales growth in excess of 40% we are in a very enviable position. As you will see our plans for 2012 are built on the expectations that this growth trajectory will continue. So I will be asking a lot of each and every one of you as we go forward and along with the Executive team, we are confident that we can rely on you. As always, along with growth will come changes and opportunities that can often be met with a mixture of trepidation and eager anticipation. I will do everything possible to make sure that you understand where we are heading, how we are going to get there and what it means to each of you.

We are planning our 2012 company kick-off for later in January in conjunction with the opening of our new headquarters. At that time you can expect to hear more details about our plans for this year and beyond. For now you should take a moment to savior the successes of 2011 and think about how you can take your personal and the company’s performance to the next level as we embrace the challenges of this exciting next chapter in building a great company.

Eric