Wrap up 2024

As we bid farewell to 2024, Cumulo9 CEO Chris Hogg has taken some time to reflect on the past 12 months. From significant achievements to key learnings, the following update highlights the challenges faced, the innovations embraced, and the milestones achieved. This wrap-up offers a glimpse into how the team navigated a dynamic landscape to deliver value to our customers while staying ahead of industry trends.

A look at 2024's key challenges

In last year’s wrap, we reflected that the world appears to be in a precarious state with ongoing and new conflicts constantly rearing their heads on top of economic challenges, especially for SME businesses. Not much has changed. Our new Government appears to have identified the issues and is on a path to implementing changes. In addition, the Reserve Bank is finally acting on interest rates. It remains to be seen what impact the new US President and a Republican majority in the House and Senate will have on New Zealand.

Embracing innovation in technology

Meanwhile, on the technology front, AI is the topic of the day. While there are some very clever engines out there, the major ones are costing literally billions to advance, and nuclear power plants need to be built to create enough electricity to run them. Alongside this, the marketing departments of some major entities have gone into overdrive promoting their AI abilities when at the very best, most of them are using nothing more than a few simple algorithms on some of the datasets they have access to. I’ve no doubt that AI will cause major structural changes in business, but we are yet to understand the real impact – in the same way that we were convinced Y2K and robots would cause the end of “Human processing units” in business.
 
In the real world, despite these amazing global AI solutions, scams and hacks continue with increasing frequency – one of my own credit cards had its chip read by an RFID scanner in Singapore, and the next thing I had charges for gambling in Cyprus appear on the statement. A timely lesson for me, and I now have a cardholder that stops RFID scans

Cumulo9’s focus on innovation and Security

At Cumulo9, we will constantly monitor the market for these and other “trends” to ensure that we can incorporate any opportunities into our development plans. Our C9 Transact solution’s new user interface has been extremely well received and provides users with deep customer insights. We’ve also spent time upgrading our Quadient CCM customers’ solutions so that they can take advantage of enhanced functionality that is morphing into what the analysts call CXM and help stay ahead of scammers.
 
Alongside that, BSI has re-certified Cumulo9 for ISO 27001:2022. Our team planned and executed a sterling project to prepare the entire company. The proof of the preparation was that our audit was completed in less than two days with zero non-conformities logged

 A Look at Our Progress

Our BCorp certification also remains current, and we have a serious focus on the “E” and “G” of “ESG” but maintain a watching brief over the “S”, as it is so subjective. During the year, we've had some great new customer successes, something we will be able to talk more about as the actual deployments roll out across our various services. We also continued our international push with Citizen Vault and eInvoicing initiatives. On the eInvoice front, I’ve just been to a conference in Kuala Lumpur. MBIE gave a presentation that showed New Zealand had processed 121,496 eInvoices over the past 12 months. This achievement is a testament to their efforts in a non-mandated environment. Meanwhile, India has processed 21.88 billion (yes, you read that right) B2B invoices since 2020. An astounding number that has allowed their economy to speed up as a result

Focus on Communication Excellence and Customer Support

Our fourth Email Insights Report reinforces our previous findings, particularly that deliverability and accurate reporting are critical factors in essential communications. We contracted a third party to investigate deliverability rates across enterprises in New Zealand and were astonished to learn that many of them are living with 80-95% rates (Cumulo9 guarantees 99%).

In parallel with these activities, we continued our support of the Gut Cancer Foundation and our passion for motorsport through our sponsorship of Liam Lawson, who has finally been given a chance to shine in Formula 1 at RB. In addition, we’ve established a partnership with the new Auckland FC A-League franchise, and the exposure has been excellent

Thanks and Best Wishes for 2025

As always we could not do any of this without your continued support. Thanks from all of us at Cumulo9 for your custom. Have a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Best regards,

Chris Hogg, CEO, Cumulo9.