Team,

The first half of the year is almost behind us. If you’ve noticed many of your colleagues out of the office recently, they are participating in our H1 Roadshow for key agents. We’ve pulled together a great cross functional group of leaders to pitch our products, talk about roadmaps, discuss challenges and brainstorm solutions.

The purpose of the roadshow is to enhance our relationship with our agents and to continue to accelerate our top line growth. The team will conclude their visits in New England in late June, and we anticipate these visits pulling in additional orders in Q3 and Q4. I’ve personally had the opportunity to watch our team in action and they are impressive. With product, marketing and sales partnering together, our competitive edge is our people. (And yes, some of our products are slick too, like our new AIRA open linear pendant made by our Plympton factory!)

So, let’s talk results – financially we are seeing an improved performance verse last year. We are seeing improved margins and a favorable sales mix which has resulted in improved quality of our earnings. Our sales of Controls products through April has exceeded budget by more than 4%. In addition, our Bookings for Controls is 14% ahead of Plan and 39% ahead of 2023, primarily driven by HLI agents and Key Accounts. The rest of the year also looks promising as submittals on NXLC Design Suite, which is a leading indicator of orders, are up ~250% vs 2023. We have had some great wins across the business including a large JPMC order for global monitoring and a DCS upgrade program, Walmart (outdoor), Stellantis and Phoenix Sky Harbour Airport. We are behind our YTD budgeted sales by 10%, which makes it more important than ever to continue to work together to accelerate growth.

Last month we launched "Explore in 2024" an initiative inspired by your feedback from the Employee Engagement Survey. Explore in 2024 is about just that, exploration, pulling together ideas and charting a course for continued success. With engagement action committees working on small tweaks and larger changes to improve our fabric, we also found that we need to bring to life what service means at Current, because we often define it differently. When we think of customers, customers are not only those external to us (agents, distributors, purchasers), but also our colleagues and vendors we work with everyday. Understanding who your customer is, is critically important to us sustaining service and accelerating top line growth.

To really explore what service means, a group of volunteers from around the world, in all departments and time zones, led more than 35 focus group sessions to collect your definitions. The focus groups provided a platform for direct dialogue and an in-depth understanding of what outstanding service experiences include and what stands in our way. As such, you have given us the answers and we are refreshing our definition of service.

A service culture involves meeting and exceeding needs and expectations through timely, efficient and high quality support. Our goal is to provide assistance, solutions and resources to both internal and external customers. In all interactions we prioritize effective communication. In order for us to do this well, skills in active listening, empathy, professionalism and problem solving are needed.

And here’s where I need your help. In our journey to accelerate the business, we must not lose sight of creating a culture of service. Take some time to think through how you deliver service and what help you may need to improve the experience. With improved performance and projected revenue growth, we can invest in resources for ensuring continued investment in the business and, importantly, in our people. And most importantly, if you see this focus in action amongst your colleagues, nominate them for our Service Culture Applause contest in June..

I’m pleased with our progress focused on developing our people. The Learning Channel is our new professional development platform for both technical and professional skill building, that can be found on SharePoint. It is supported by LinkedIn Learning and training events.

We have made strategic decisions to expand our regions moving from three to four and hired a new RVP Drew Robertson, joining in early June. We’ve critically looked at how we can best enable ease of doing business through our touchpoints and hired a new head of marketing, Shannon Thomas, also joining in early June. Additionally, we continue to build our pipeline by investing in engineers, sales team members, co-ops and interns across our business.

Together, we will accelerate our journey and make a lasting impact on our customers and organization. Our priorities are clear:

  • Sustain and improve service levels
  • Enhance the customer experience, from inquiry to invoice
  • Optimize operational efficiency

Thanks for everything you do for the team.