2023 Retrospective: Overcoming challenges, celebrating milestones, and embracing a promising tomorrow

The past year has been a testament to our resilience, adaptability, and firm commitment to growing our company to maximize our software’s impact on society.

The decision to undergo a significant transformation a couple of years back was not taken lightly. We recognized the need to adapt, innovate, and embrace change to faster get our software to serve more customers and stay ahead in a dynamic market. Leading change during these transformative years has demanded an incisive balancing act between strategic vision, employee morale, stakeholder expectations, and operational execution.

It is not easy to drive change and I think every leader encounter moment of uncertainty and self-doubt. This year was tough for me, marked by trials and triumphs, teaching me invaluable lessons along the way.

Scaling a software company like NetClean through a two-tier distribution model and venturing into new markets is an adventure—a thrilling chapter in the company's story that promises growth, learning, and the opportunity to make a positive impact on a global scale.

Our existing customers - the backbone of our business transformation

In today's tricky business environment impacted by geopolitical instabilities and economic uncertainties, the significance of retaining our existing customer base cannot be overstated.

Therefore, nurturing existing relationships and ensuring customer satisfaction was a strategic investment for us when we laid out the new strategy. I am proud of our customer care team that year after year keep our customers satisfied and our churn low. Our customer retention and loyalty not only act as a buffer during these turbulent times, ensuring a more predictable income source, but positive endorsements from satisfied customers are also invaluable when acquiring new customers in new markets.

Overcoming distribution challenges across Sweden, Benelux, and the UK

The primary challenge for us this year was to establish a solid distribution and sales network in our target markets, Sweden, Benelux, and the UK. Reflecting on 2023, I am pleased that we have managed to identify the right channels, updated our messaging to better bring forward our software’s unique value proposition in our partners cybersecurity portfolios and build relationships with local partners that have the existing customer relationships to crack open exponential growth for us. We have successfully navigated through complexities in distribution, and we have built a team in the UK that will be up and running in Q1 2024.

Aligning product roadmap implementation with vision and strategy

Our vision is that NetClean’s products are a given cybersecurity solution for companies, organizations, and partners worldwide, utilized on all work IT devices. I am proud that we have executed on our product roadmap by expanding our detection coverage, simplifying deployment to increase roll-out speed and built the software to increase value for partners and their customers by building ready-made security apps for deployment in Microsoft Sentinel, Splunk and IBM Qradar.

Sales amplification through flexibility and adaptability

What we’ve been building has been time-consuming and recognizing the pressing need to move forward rapidly in response to opportunities has put the team’s ability to quickly adopt to challenges to the test.

Flexibility and adaptability are key components to amplify our efforts to drive sales together with our partners next year and establish our software as an industry-leading solution helping CISO’s protecting their organizations from known threats and vulnerabilities, today overlooked by all other security solutions.

I am excited about the possibilities that lie before us. I am immensely proud of the eco-system we are building and It’s a privilege to lead the incredible team that NetClean is.

Here's to a year of new possibilities, mutual growth, and continued success. I am wishing you all a joyful holiday season!

Anna Borgström, NetClean CEO