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Article actual date: Dec 20, 2021
Jublia had immense growth this year. We’ve achieved around a 45% year-on-year increase in Conversations, a collection of meetings, chats, and Request For Quotations (RFQs), created within our platform. This proves once again that our progressive approach in producing better innovations is the key to increasing the value of our client’s hybrid events and securing our place as a reliable performance driver for events. But these numbers don’t come easy. Here, we share our 2021 story and our vision for the new year.
In 2020, as any other businesses, we tried to grasp how to continue the business with no end in sight as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt the industry. As challenging as it is, our emphasis on people and technology has enabled us to lead the charge in creating engaging virtual experiences through our AI Engagement Hub. We’ve then gained leverage on this specialty and done successful virtual events like HLTH VRTL 2020, CAREhab-SRC 2020, Innovation Day — Região Sula 2020, and Summer Sourcing Week 2020.
“I think last year could be translated as an analogy of running a 100 meters sprint. We have built a lot of different components, implementing a lot of different things, all to enhance our system for virtual events in 2020 in a considerably short amount of time. After you run a 100 meters sprint with full energy, you’re bound to be tired. So we take a break and a breather and look back to our previous track. And through that, we learn so many new things that we could implement to our next step. We want to take these learnings and use that for adapting to a hybrid world. We’re inspired by how far we’ve come to this point and we’re setting our eye on the next goal we have set.” — Chinab Chugh, Chief Technology Officer
From these past experiences, we move forward to 2021 by focusing on our learnings to innovate and provide more seamless hybrid solutions that the market needs. Jublia arises as an experienced player in this game and has found our footings to kickstart the year.
However, with more hybrid opportunities comes more competition in the market, resulting in more decision fatigue in our clients. Thankfully, with our steadfastness in delivering the core fundamentals of scalability and usability, we could answer this problem by helping customers shift their attention and focus towards the improvement of value that we could bring for them. Through the Human First, Feature Second focus that we’re confident in, each of our team divisions undergoes evolutions that contribute to our 2021 success.
2021 was a very elaborate period for our Tech & Product team, as we were focused on adapting to Hybrid events and crafting our own unique position in the new-normal MICE industry.
We started off the year being quite sure that we don’t want to enter the features rat race. We are not excited to be known as a 100-feature company. Rather, we want to develop mastery in our features to produce well-thought products where every feature is deeply connected and flexibly integrated for different customer use-cases.
We set out to bring together 4 key pieces to improve on what Jublia can offer to our clients: Analytics, Self-service, Content, and Integration. The first three were developed in the first half of the year, while the last one, Integration, was the focus of the second half.
Our integration effort is also shown through our innovation on Products. This integration ensured that our arsenal of features elevate the user experience when interacting with products on the platform.
As a result, we garnered over a million platform visits, with almost 3 million people, products, and companies views within our platform.
We also maintained technical excellence in resolving issues in the system within 90% of the maximum time we promise to our clients.
In total, we made over 1500 product releases this year, including minor and major upgrades and developments to the platform,
Lastly, in 2021, our technical infrastructure had 0 downtime throughout this year, showing that the tech is resilient amidst the rapid scaling we had this year.
The first half of the year serves as a testing ground for our plan and performance. This was a challenging but exciting period for the Business Development team, as we had the chance to work with clients we’ve been conversing with during the past few years and managed to produce excellent results for them. This period also marks a point where there is much emphasis on delivering solutions that our Tech & Product team developed in 2020. Some of the noteworthy clients we have had the honor to work with include Informa Markets, the World Trade Centre Association, ITB Asia, Intel, and Ipsen. Notable events we worked on included the #HIREBLACK Juneteenth MentorMatch and Airport Show Hybrid+ 2021.
Technology evolves fast. As a tech company, we realize that some of our technical expertise could be short-lived as our peers in the industry constantly push the boundaries of what’s possible in a digital event.
“I think it is safe to say that 2021 was a challenging year, even more so than the year before. 2020 was a year of experimentation as well as the reallocation of event budgets for organizers to compete effectively in the digital domain. Combined with the boom in the event technology scene, 2021 saw an increased amount of competitive noise and we worked really hard to differentiate. That being said, we are thrilled to share that we have completed another record-breaking year at Jublia. Our commercial team has grown twice in size to keep up with the demands in our primary markets. We have also onboarded exciting new enterprise customers that include global technology leaders as well as international pharmaceutical conglomerates. These partnerships represent our growth and entry into new customer verticals.
When we secure a new client project, we work closely with the Customer Success team, and we also trust our technology a lot. It is important that no internal silos exist for our end clients’ benefit as we pride ourselves to sing the same tune. This internal collaboration and the openness across teams leads to healthy and transparent communication. Our operational excellence that is uniquely embedded in Jublia’s culture is the most important value that drives our success.”— Errol Lim, Chief Operating Officer
Jublia has also grown its capabilities in terms of working with clients’ needs. The first half of the year marks a point where we are better equipped to build a collaborative relationship with our clients. Full credit goes to our Customer Success team, who focused on 5 key points during this period to work on their roadmap for Customer Success Excellence.
With these support processes and channels put in place, Jublia could better understand what our clients need, and thus address it proactively. The Customer Success team’s efforts in creating an all-encompassing service process dedicated to supporting our clients have therefore allowed us to more precisely elevate their event brand experience.
The structure of our Customer Success team has evolved as well. In the second half of the year, we created two specializations, the Customer Education (CEd) and Customer Experience (CX) teams. With this new structure and transition, it will be easier to delight our customers.
Some achievements we had were the standardization of the onboarding process for different clients’ needs, improving our global on-time support, and the process to collaborate with the Tech & Product team with our clients’ needs.
“The team’s highlight this year is its massive growth during 2021, and our team doubled in size to dedicatedly support all clients’ journeys with us. We also focused on working with our roadmap towards building Customer Success Excellence by identifying relevant key checkpoints that involved other teams’ contributions.” — Princess Grace Loyola, Head of Customer Success
“We’re really good at what we do, which is matchmaking and engagements, and we’re definitely thinking beyond that, taking all of our learnings, all the success that we’ve had, and evolving it into something bigger. We’re not yet at the pinnacle of our success, yet we have made our excellence shine in our projects with the camaraderie and teamwork which we can all be proud of.” — Chinab Chugh, Chief Technology Officer
Through our joint efforts to improve each division, we have continued our journey to augment and challenge ourselves to do better. We don’t work in silos, we work together. Jublia’s growth also extends to our internal teams, which were restructured to create and develop better values for our clients. Each team in Jublia has been growing in size. New adjustments were made to accommodate the bigger team size and ensure that goals are still aligned.
Hence our journey to grow and evolve won’t have been possible without the common value that we believe in Jublia: In Team With Trust.
“It has been a really challenging year so far not just for the Customer Success team but for Jublia as a whole. From transitioning physical events to virtual and now that we are catering for hybrid events, I think it only proves how flexible we are. With these radical shifts in event formats, it is also safe to say that our team’s experiences have humbled us to learn the art of prioritisation especially during the heaviest time of the year. On a more personal note, the support and encouragement that I get from the entire Jublia Team have contributed to my own empowerment to drive growth and development.” — Princess Grace Loyola, Head of Customer Success Division
And with the team, we care most importantly about everyone’s mental wellness in this pandemic time. On top of giving space for friendly interactions that bring people closer together and boost the chemistry of teamwork, it was important to emphasize on a positive work environment where all Jublians are cared for.
“Before, event technology has not always been the main highlight of the tech industry, most people put their attention on e-commerce or fintech. But right now, the industry is becoming more and more lively. With the world in a current need for this specific solution, there has been growing interest and growing attention in this field, and Jublia is right in the middle of it. Without a doubt, this is a big opportunity for us, so it’s very important for us to continue to innovate, to not rest on our laurels, so that we keep on being updated and relevant. As the year comes to a quick close, our team is reflecting and adapting ourselves to the next unexpected inflection in the industry. We are equipped with the technology, and most importantly the skills to deliver successful in-person, virtual and hybrid events for 2022. Although our path may not be the smoothest, our direction is clear. Our aim is to make 2022 a breakthrough year for Jublia” — Errol Lim, Chief Operating Officer
So what’s our next step? Yan, our CEO, puts it succinctly:
“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, and I come to work daily with immense excitement to work with teammates who are constantly evolving their work excellence. The ultimate beneficiaries are definitely our clients, where you will look forward to seeing more focused developments and consultative support that will contribute to your event brand success.
With the pandemic increasing the demands of our work at Jublia, we will continue to strive to do better to create a positive environment that cares to develop each person’s mindfulness. Because at the end of the day, what matters is that the work environment should contribute to each person’s definition of their own happiness.” — Kuan Yan Tan, Chief Executive Officer
We’re grateful for what we’ve achieved so far, and we’re humbled to be reminded that all this is a result of our team effort. Moving forward, we’ve got interesting projects planned ahead, and we cannot wait to reveal them to you in 2022. Stay tune with Jublia!
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