DigiQuatics: 2018 Year In Review
The end of the year is a great time to reflect on the last twelve months and to start getting pumped for the coming twelve! In many ways, 2018 was a pivotal year for DigiQuatics, both on the app side and for the company as a whole! Every year, it's great to look-up and see how far we've come, the best part... I know we have not even scratched the surface with what we can accomplish in the aquatics (and eventually recreation) software space!
On the app side, the DigiQuatics team shipped some major new updates and improvements that are a culmination of months of effort, planning and hard work. A major weight has been lifted off our proverbial shoulders as we shift from just building new code to, now, scaling the app and fine-tuning our UI/UX and server/app performance to reach the global aquatics market. And, so far, the overwhelming support and feedback from our users have blown us away!
Also, a big shout-out to all of the encouraging customers that sent us kind messages about how much DigiQuatics has improved their work lives. It really means a lot and it helps keeps us going.
DigiQuatics also had a huge year financially, accompanied by awesome user-growth and some exciting new potential partnership/business opportunities.
In 2018 alone, we added nearly fifty additional customers, including a top-tier pool management company. We love seeing the Digi family grow!
We couldn’t be prouder that these customers found DigiQuatics such a significant asset in their day-to-day operation and long-term organizational strategy that they became customers this year (see how we can help your organization too).
Finally, our Friends of DigiQuatics (FoD) Facebook Group continued to grow and create a ton of incredible conversations and awesome posts.
All told, DigiQuatics has created over one million Shifts, 500K+ Chemical Records, and hundreds of thousands of Time Clocks, Certifications, Maintenance Issues, Private Lessons, and more! (We do have 16 Modules after-all).
So, with that, let’s dig in and walk through everything that happened this year, starting with the most recent news first:
December
Reached 20,000 users
Released updated modules informational pages for Staff Scheduling, Time Clocks, Chemical Records, Custom Forms, Custom Checklists, and Shift Reports
November
Attended Parks and Rec Ontario (PRO) conference to learn and kick off an initial push into the Canadian aquatics market
Launched our "DigiJuice" signature cocktail! Read more about that awesomeness here
Rolled out infrastructure changes to the app that lead to 1.5-2.0x faster page loads for our customers
October
General app updates
September
Group Lessons module came out of beta and is officially launched
August
Launched "Auto-Schedule" feature in the Scheduling Module to allow aquatics supervisors and pool managers a nearly "single click" solution to scheduling their entire staff
Implemented OCR "Optical Character Recognition" for picture attachments of printed/hand-written Shift Report attachments
July
Released Member and Household Management Module
Kirsten Barnes came on as the Customer Success Manager for DigiQuatics and has helped successfully onboard new customers and provide great customer service! Thanks, Kirsten!
June
Integrated Dark Sky Web Service to pull in weather data with each Chemical Record or Patron Count submitted, this will be used in the future to predict bather load or chemical levels based on weather data
DigiQuatics hits 15,000 users
May
Released "spreadsheet" tool in-app to add the ability for mass importing (from Excel in the browser) for all of your locations and pools as well as mass-editing capabilities. This was an important change toward moving into enterprise (>500 user) organizations. We have also built many duplication "tools" to ensure larger customers can get setup very quickly in DigiQuatics
April
Made major improvement to Employee Management page in DigiQuatics, this includes: more robust searching, better visibility of key information such as positions and assigned locations, and improved page load times
March
General app updates
February
Attended the Association of Aquatic Professionals (AOAP) for the 2nd year in a row
Kirsten presented a session at the conference
January
Josh and Michael attended Texas Public Pool Conference for the 2nd year in a row
Soft-follow-up launch for our eBook, "The Crash Course for Pool Managers"
Closing Thoughts
In 2018, we saw an upward trend amongst our customers and prospects toward going "digital" with management and operations at swimming pools, an overall push to move aquatics into the 21st century.
The new Custom Forms, Group Lessons, and Household Management Modules have gotten a ton of interest! We are continuing to push forward on work for additional new and un-released Modules: In-Service Tracking, Real-Time Chat (in-app), Preventative Maintenance, MAHC checklists/forms, and so many more!
In 2019 we are doubling down on making sure that DigiQuatics becomes a major player that aquatics staff worldwide choose to digitize their aquatics and facilities with. Nearly every decision we’ve made this year is in pursuit of this vision, and this relentless focus on more modules, better quality features, and more intuitive ways to gain insights from data will continue to guide every decision we make next year, too.
Check out our product roadmap if you'd like to follow along with our progress this year. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Thank you!
From all of us at DigiQuatics: We thank you, the wonderful community, our customers and dear friends in the industry -- special shout out to Joey Rusnak, Shawn DeRosa, and so many more 😀, making this the best job in the world. All of your support, kind words, testing, and feedback keeps us going and helps make DigiQuatics the best it can be.
And finally, to the DigiQuatics team, Kirsten Barnes in particular: It’s been a blast working with each and every one of you to transform DigiQuatics from a project out-of-school (years ago) to an entire company that helps organizations "Manage Pools, Not Paper.", the truly "All-In-One-App" for Aquatics, and the global solution for aquatics and recreation software in the years to come.
I can’t wait to see what next year has in store.
Here’s to an awesome 2019!
-Michael Pierce | DigiQuatics CTO