Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, perhaps my favorite holiday of the year. It is a day in which most of us spend time with loved ones with fewer expectations than good food, good conversation, a roaring fire, and a couple football games to fall asleep to once the tryptophan kicks in.
This year, however, we celebrate Thanksgiving in the midst of an incredible run for WebFilings – a run, mind you, with no foreseeable end in sight. In fact, we're just getting started.
We have solidified ourselves as the fastest growing industry leader for SEC reporting and filing solutions, as well as XBRL capabilities and scaling.
With many companies looking to address the challenges that the new XBRL mandates bring, we find ourselves in competitive situations with all the big name vendors you already know about, and many of the lesser named ones as well. Our technology and messaging is resonating with forward thinking organizations who have decided to leave archaic practices behind and embrace the new efficiencies that innovation brings. And we are winning the battles.
Sure, there is the occasional pesky political mucky muck that goes with the territory. Industry dinosaurs reluctant to move away from long-term vendor relationships who have since become their “scotch and golf” pals are perhaps our biggest foes. But all things considered, we are gaining unprecedented market share, the printers are quaking in their golf spikes, and WebFilings has moved itself to the front of the conversation, where we intend to stay.
So today, on Thanksgiving Eve, I’d like to take a moment to imagine what many of our hundreds of WebFilings customers will be thankful for tomorrow as they gather around the dinner table, hand-in-hand with those that they love most, and reflect on how much their professional lives have been positively impacted by WebFilings.
I'm thankful for moments of weakness. I confess, most of the time I ignore the voicemails and delete the emails of these sales guys who are constantly trying to sell me another copy-cat service or product. But for some reason, I don’t know why, I let my guard down and actually took the call from WebFilings. What they proceeded to tell me just didn’t sound possible, so I had to see it with my own eyes. Now, here I am, a WebFilings customer, a product of that one, teensy-weensy moment of weakness where I decided to actually pick up my phone.
I'm thankful for apples and oranges. When I first saw the WebFilings solution in action it was immediately clear that it was not like any other product on the market. Seriously, it was akin to a grocer holding an apple in one hand and an orange in the other. Only the orange was a crazy super power super orange or something. Like, it was glowing and the apple was almost grayed out. I don’t know how to possibly over exaggerate the comparison any more than that.
I'm thankful for six to eight versus six to eight. Wait, what? I’m talking six to eight MONTHS versus six to eight DAYS. Let me explain. A peer of mine at another organization purchased a product from one of those other big name vendors that took about eight months for them to implement and actually start using. And by that time, they were already three versions behind on the product, thus perpetuating the issue even further. With WebFilings, we were up and running and using their technology in a week – a WEEK. We even filed our first Q through their tool in less than a month. And all at a fraction of the cost from what my peer’s company spent. The simplicity of use and scalability of WebFilings is unrivaled.
I'm thankful for clouds. No, not the puffy ones or the wispy ones or the ones that are dark and foreboding looking. I’m talking about that crazy cloud buzz term that is all the rage right now. WebFilings is 100% cloud based, which saves my company a ton of money, allows me to work on and share my reports in an environment safer than what we could afford to install internally, and better yet, I can work on all my forms and reports from anywhere – I just need a browser, an internet connection, and a lap top. In fact, if the mood strikes me right, I might get a jump on some XBRL tags while I’m lying in bed and warding off my food hangover on Friday.
I'm thankful for pencils UP, thank you very much. Never again will a printer tell me they need “pencils down” 48 hours prior to when I need my report back from them after EDGAR and/or XBRL. And I’ll shout this from the rooftops if I have to, dang it! With WebFilings, you can make last minute changes to your report and generate new EDGARs and new XBRL instance documents in SECONDS, and a mere minutes before actually filing through the very same WebFilings tool.
I'm thankful for “Atta boys.” The aforementioned moment of weakness led to a first meeting with WebFilings. That led to subsequent meetings with WebFilings, and eventually my CFO getting into the act. Once we determined how much time and money it would save our organization, not to mention how much it has helped us minimize our risk, I became a hero in the eyes of my reporting team and my CFO, who also became a hero in the eyes of our CEO. For my efforts, I got a free Butterball turkey and all of our employees and shareholders got a more efficient, more profitable, and more valuable organization.
Have a safe, happy, and enjoyable Thanksgiving Holiday!