How Great Companies Show Up When Times Are Difficult

The Real Test of Character

One of my most borrowed sayings is: people are like tea bags – you see what inside of them when you put them in hot water (thank you to Ralph Haffenden of Threadline Leadership). In other words…you see people’s true nature when times are difficult. Do they look to support and protect others, or do they retreat into self-protection?

I’ve been blessed to have many such opportunities to focus on “doing what’s right” for my customers over the years, and it has always served me well. However, the proudest experiences of my career have occurred in my recent journey founding EverBlue Partners, with the belief that maintaining these principles at the core of a nimble, human centered organization could lead to something even more special. I’m proud to say that we see the growth and resilience of the EverBlue team through events that would bankrupt some companies and ruin the cultures of others. Prime examples are:

Year One: A 90% Revenue Pause

The Moment: Within the first year of EverBlue’s existence, the project that, at the time, represented ~90% of company revenue went on full pause within a 30-day window due to the weakness in the customer’s business performance.

Our Decision: The Managing Partner team immediately addressed the issue with the entire company, put together an action plan with input from the entire team and provided daily updates. With the entire team’s combined effort, 7 new customers confirmed their belief in our team and our model – and within 90 days, 120% of the lost revenue was in delivery across 7 new customers.

Year Two: Customer Bankruptcy

The Moment: In EverBlue’s second year, due to business issues, one of our largest customers went into liquidation resulting in immediate cancellation of our contract and hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost customer receivables.

Our Decision: Even though EverBlue did not receive payment from our customer, the company paid every contract resource on time and in full Among many positive outcomes, one of those contract resources later became EverBlue’s Head of Delivery.

Year Three: A Global SAP Retail ERP Challenge

The Moment: In EverBlue’s third year, we took on the prime system integrator role for the largest SAP Retail ERP public cloud program in the world in part to help SAP create a needed positive story for an exciting nascent technology. The program experienced challenges resulting in two replans and significant cost overruns from original project budget.

Our Decision: Relying upon the solid foundation of our EverBlue culture, our management team regrouped to decide how to respond. Without question, we decided that EverBlue leaned in closer to the customer and SAP teams and stood by our commitment to 100% customer satisfaction. The impact: EverBlue contributed over $1 million in free services to protect the customer budget and added even more of its best resources to the program. With this combined partnership and commitment, the program completed its first go-live successfully across all stores and is poised to complete its last go-live successfully very soon.

What EverBlue Stands For

As a proud leader of an organization that works in a complex, fast-paced industry, I find it incredibly comforting to know that in just four short (and yet, long!) years, we’ve already hardwired a culture that will get us through the tough times. And more importantly, each and every one of our people know that they are fully empowered to always “do what’s right” for our customers to ensure their complete success and satisfaction.

That’s exactly why the name EverBlue stands for commitment (Ever) to community (Blue…a call to SAP blue). We celebrate the success of others. We win when our community wins.

The first 4 years of EverBlue have created a foundation of commitment, trust and excellence. The next 40+ years we’ll build on that foundation to make EverBlue an essential resource to our global community. Thank you all who enable EverBlue to be EverBlue!