NJ Tech Companies Answer: What Was Your Greatest 2011 Accomplishment?, Part 2
NJTechWeekly.com asked some N.J. tech companies to name their single greatest accomplishment in 2011. Most had a hard time choosing just one, but we tried to hold their feet to the fire and their statements to our original premise. This is the second part of that story. We present their answers below, in alphabetical order by company name.
Chairman and CEO Bob Carr, Heartland Payment Systems Inc. (Princeton), said the company’s greatest accomplishment was completing a giant project his smaller firm undertook with ConocoPhillips and Barclays Bank:
Heartland Payment Systems’s greatest 2011 accomplishment was successfully integrating the back-end processing services of more than 8,000 branded locations of the fourth-largest U.S. company, ConocoPhillips, into our 21st century, state-of-the-art settlement system, Passport. The project included creating a new partnership between Heartland and Barclays Bank Delaware, the U.S. operation of Barclaycard, which delivers payment network sponsorship services for major card brand transactions … Heartland had to manage three organizational conversion teams simultaneously. We had to complete this entire three-party project while continuing to provide those same 8,000+ ConocoPhillips branded locations existing front-end authorization services through our secure, Payment Card Industry-compliant network. Working with the fourth-largest U.S. business and the world’s second largest bank was a first for our entrepreneurial and much smaller company …. our future will continue to be incredibly bright as long as we maintain our flexibility and nimbleness with large businesses. If we did it with these two great organizations, we can succeed with any size company.”
Phone.com Inc.’s (Livingston) CEO Ari Rabban said his company’s mobile phone app suite expansion was the firm’s greatest 2011 accomplishment. Phone.com describes itself as a 21st-century VoIP- and cloud-based phone service specializing in small- to very small-sized business needs:
Phone.com had a big year with a lot of news. The greatest accomplishment to affect our small-business/home-phone customers was the expansion of our mobile phone app suite. We now service the top three smartphone operating systems: the OS for the Android and BlackBerry with our Mobile Office app, and the iPhone’s OS with our Mobile VoIP app. Plus, we have the Group SMS app along with ChatCalls, for businesses or individuals wanting to send personalized audio messages. With mobile apps on all three platforms, we’ve again positioned ourselves as the leading telephone service for SMBs/entrepreneurs. We have worked very hard to expand this lineup and make it as robust as possible this year.
For Princeton Power Systems Inc. (Princeton), a manufacturer of advanced power conversion products and alternative energy systems, a 2011 high point was bringing its Demand Response inverter to market, which enhances renewable energy systems’ performance. Darren Hammell, executive vice president:
The greatest 2011 highlight for Princeton Power Systems (PPS) was the development of its Demand Response Inverter (DRI), demonstrated at our Island in the Sun event in September. Joined by industry colleagues and key dignitaries, PPS demonstrated the DRI’s ability to improve electrical grid interconnectivity and efficiency, enhance the performance of renewable energy systems and allow for better integration of electric vehicles and distributed power generation. Thanks to the hard work of our engineers and production and marketing teams, this three-year project received R & D Magazine’s 2011 R & D 100 Award. Heading into 2012, the DRI will further prove its value as part of several installations throughout the United States, including a commercial electric vehicle charging station powered by solar energy.
SHI International Corp. (Somerset), which we profiled earlier in 2011, said making the transition to its new building without causing disruption to clients was key this year. CEO Thai Lee:
As we moved into our new world headquarters and cut the ribbon for our cloud data center in Somerset, SHI’s greatest 2011 accomplishment was ensuring—as we continued to grow and reinvest in our company—our longtime customers saw zero disruption in the world-class service they expect from us. Moving nearly 1,000 central Jersey-based employees from one headquarters to another and launching a brand-new product (the SHI Cloud) within a three-month timeframe could have been distracting. I am proud our employees never forgot the everyday needs of the IT industry’s most loyal and supportive customers always have been—and will be—SHI’s top priority.
