2022: A Year in Review with Forecast CEO Dennis Kayser

At Forecast, we’re unifying work, resource, and finance management through strong data connectivity. We're enabling intelligent decisions to drive better outcomes through our AI-native platform, which represents the most advanced technology ever applied to managing projects, resources and finances. 

Succeeding in difficult times

This is my annual year in review and when I look back over 2022, as ever, it feels as if the year has flown by.  Who could have predicted the challenges over the last two years? COVID-19 has more than made its mark entering us into a new era of AI technology and hybrid working. The current market conditions have made it very hard for many - both companies and individuals - to continue growing at pace. 

As 2022 draws to an end, I want to take the opportunity to reminisce on what has been a turbulent year, but also one that has given us a very different perspective.  In general there have been strong tailwinds for many during the last 2 years, and they have come to an abrupt stop for most. It's times like these where we have to prove how resilient we are as a business. 

Luckily Forecast has never had a stronger team than we do now and we are well equipped to tackle the headwinds facing us and the rest of the world. Startups are hard in the first place, but some of the most successful and iconic companies have succeeded during the most testing of times.

Forecast expansion in 2022

2022 also brought on some very exciting and strong additions to our executive team. With the opening of our first ever US office in New York we had both Jeff Boone, VP Sales, and Nicole Lindenbaum, VP Marketing,  join - making them our first two hires in NYC. We’re continuing to scale that team. We also promoted Dylan Connerton to VP Product, bolstering up our already fantastic exec team. I’m incredibly grateful to have the team we do. 

We also had our second annual Oomphfest in Budapest, Hungary which brought together our team members in the United States, United Kingdom and Denmark. The event saw many inspiring sessions across the teams before hearing about the market outlook from one of our investors.  

Forecast growth and recognition

It’s not easy to do, and people are taking notice! Forecast was recognized on Deloitte’s Fast 50 list this year, and we were a finalist in Lloyd’s Bank Business Excellence Awards and the Nordic Startup Awards. 

We partnered both with BIMA and Pimento and hosted a number of very successful events throughout the year.

As we entered 2022, there was a real sense of pace and energy that built up during the first half of the year. Customer demand and activity levels became supercharged across many areas of the business. Our total number of user sessions grew by 47% which means that in a given month we now have over 280,000 sessions! 

However, over the past few months, many businesses have been feeling pain due to the drastic shift in the macroeconomic climate, and our customers are no exception. We are lucky to be working with customers who have identified the value in investing in our platform and continue to see it increase as time goes on. They know that this sets them - and their business -  up for success, especially in a turbulent market. 

Companies across the world are in dire need for a solution like Forecast in order to appropriately resource projects, manage burnout, ensure strong ROI, and protect profit margins on their work. 

Our customers in the US continue to comprise half of our customer base, with another 30% in Europe, and the remaining spread across the rest of the globe. We’ve continued to add new customer contracts in each and every month of 2022. We’ve also increased volumes from every area of our highly valued long-term customer base - which now counts over tens of thousands of users on a daily basis.

New offerings, features, and enhancements

We continue to improve the platform and release updates multiple times a day, but some of the biggest things we launched in 2022 were:

• Revenue recognition - See accurate monthly revenue distribution across all budget types, and on a portfolio-level overview.
• Nova Insights - Your AI partner that provides a quick, easy and understandable overview of how your projects are going.
• Skills and levels - Find the right person for a job, for successful resource planning.
• Sub-tasks - Enable multiple levels of task to suit any way of working.
• Integrations - Map projects to Hubspot, Pipedrive, Slack & BambooHR to get more connectivity between your systems.
• Advanced Analytics - Get powerful BI reporting at your fingertips.
• Forecast Academy - Train your team quickly via a full self-service training solution that certifies users in both Forecast itself and general project management.

We also started our quarterly Latest and Greatest webinar series for customers to learn more about new releases, along with our Beta program where customers opt in to get early access to new features.

With the advances we’ve done on the product, we’ve never been better equipped to help support our customers’ success through 2023 and onwards.

2023 sneak preview

We take in an enormous amount of customer feedback, and listen intensely to what elements our customers are missing that would improve the use of Forecast. From that feedback, we’re very excited for our new big advancements that are now about to go live, such as: 

• New Information Architecture - Completely overhauled to make Forecast much easier and quicker to navigate.
• New design language - Overhauled styling to ensure consistency across the platform.
• Search improvements - Machine learning-driven search functionality to make sure customers can find what you need at lightning speed.
• Capacity planning - Ensure you have the right mix of people and enough of them.
• Program management - Get a birds-eye view and plan large-scale bodies of work.
• Revamped in-app reporting - Ensure you have the right data to make informed decisions.

All of this is done with the goal of making our customers’ work fully seamless, with as little friction as possible. For 2023 we’re laser-focused on making our core platform better, more tightly integrated with the systems you already use and automating as much as possible for the end-user. This is not exhaustive and there’s much more to come! 

Forecasters forge the future

Finally, none of this would be possible without the ingenuity, hard work and oomph that our team brings, day after day. Product and Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Finance and Legal, as well as our office team - together as one team make this possible and I’m so grateful for all you do. 

To Forecasters who recently joined and Forecasters who have contributed throughout the year, your work is what makes us who we are, so thank you. 

We’re always guided in our belief that when technology does what it does best, humans can do what they do best. We are ready for what 2023 brings.

Happy New Year!