Happy New Year

Daniel from ITstuff[ed]

Happy New Year!

We are back - We have had a couple of weeks to recharge our energy, reflect on 2020, and put a plan of action together to reach our goals for 2021.

2020 was a challenging year. It seemed to be going on for much longer than 365 days. However, my reflections over the last weeks have reminded me that 2020 has had many positive facets.
I thought I'd share the up and downs of 2020 with you:

At the beginning of the year, we built up a very strong customer base in and around Christchurch. We managed to find and provide the right service at the right price for businesses and home users and were able to grow rapidly. We started putting plans in place to hire new staff.

All of a sudden, just before lockdown in March, it started to look very dire for ITstuff[ed]. We invested a lot of time and effort to come up with the right solution for our newly gained customers. Some, unfortunately, weren't sure about their future; contracts were put on hold or cancelled altogether. It was a difficult time to get motivated and keep going.

During the lockdown, we strived to support and work in with businesses we were looking after. For us to see our work making a real difference for our customers brought back the fire inside to keep going.
We were also deemed an essential service. We managed to get through the lockdown by supporting and with the support of our families and community.
Thank you @switchespresso @newbrightonmuseum @extremecarpetcleaning

After lockdown, it was time to reassess and readjust. With the learnings, we redefined our services. We started taking on new and larger clients. We helped many businesses to transition to a remotely accessible workplace in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. We put e-commerce solutions in place. We got homes ready to access faster internet - so people can do work efficiently and watch streaming services. We started working with many community organisations. We were very lucky that we were able to support causes we believed in, for example, @xchch and @specialchildrenschristmasparty

This is one of my fondest memory of 2020: Businesses that we supported through difficult months started to thrive again. They did not start to thrive just because of us but I'd like to think that we had something to do with it.

In September we picked up from where we had left off before lockdown. We hired Jayden, who also lives on the east side of Christchurch - we were incredibly lucky to have found the perfect person for the job. You will see more of Jayden on here soon too.

Thank you, Lisa, from @socialcurrency for your support in this process.

The remaining months of 2020, we kept chipping away at contracts that we had picked up over the last few months, completing most of them before Christmas. (Apologies Martha and Emily at the @NBproject, we will get you up and running first thing when you are back from your well deserved holiday, first thing in 2021.)

For the final weeks of the year, we managed to find some time to review and streamline our internal processes and to gain some more clarity.

What 2020 has shown me is, that we as a community in Christchurch are very strong. We care about each other; We care about you as a person and we care about the businesses we support. We are very fortunate to be able to express our sense of caring by looking after you, your computers and IT systems.

For 2021, personally and as a business, we endeavour to grow further, create more opportunity for other people to help us grow and grow with us.

We hope you had a wonderful time over the holiday season, got a chance to reflect and got some goals set for yourself