Stevie-winner Zywave provides software and technology solutions for the insurance industry in the United States and internationally. It offers cloud-based sales management, client delivery, content, and analytics solutions.

More than 15,000 carriers, agencies, and brokerages worldwide—including all of the top 100 US insurance brokerages—use Zywave solutions to enhance client services, achieve business growth, and promote greater health, wellness, risk management, and safety.

Zywave’s all-in-one platform provides customizable, user-friendly options that enable insurance professionals to build a unique solution to fit their specific growth goals.

Prioritizing Customer Experience
The company’s support organization of 50 agents handles around 100,000 complex cases per year.

Led by VP of Support, Emre Tekoglu, the support team was looking to transform from a reactive model to a more proactive support experience. Additionally, Emre wanted to shift from a cost center to position support as a strategic element of the overall customer experience. 

They eventually deployed SupportLogic to predict potential escalations, as well as automate case evaluation and review. SupportLogic generated escalation predictions, provided customer sentiment trend analysis, and surfaced the best cases for managers to review.

SupportLogic helped Zywave quickly become more proactive and predictive by enabling managers and agents to better prioritize focus and customer outreach. Zywave also reduced escalations and kept CSAT metrics strong, achieving 96% satisfaction score for the month of July 2023. They plan to continue to work with SupportLogic to keep escalations low and draw from teachable moments for case reviews.

Not only has Zywave Support made significant technology investments to power improvement of the customer support experience, but also to improve the support reps' experience.

Expanding Global Support Operations
Zywave Support has transitioned from the central Milwaukee location with 28 support representatives into global support operations with over 70 people in various locations, including the Philippines, Boston, Dallas, and other remote locations, by embracing change management over the last two years. 

They have now shifted from reactive to proactive support in everyone's desired state in customer service organizations by prioritizing the right cases using AI/NLP technology. They can effectively predict 70% of escalations before they happen by leveraging their data and insights.

Support is now a destination career path for both internal and external candidates. The changes they made enabled the support team to become the most successful department in the company based on employee retention, even when the whole industry was facing widespread resignations.

Since Winning Their Stevie^® Award
Through the convergence of process, technology, and most importantly, their people, Zywave is committed to delivering the optimal customer experience. They recognize this is an ongoing journey that demands a growth mindset and continuous learning.

Since the application period, Zywave has focused on the following:

New process - They launched a new function in support for incidents. By deploying a critical incident response function, they demonstrate their commitment to proactively address and mitigate issues that affect multiple customers, ensuring swift and effective resolutions to preserve their trust and satisfaction.

Focus on support team’s growth - They have introduced a volunteer day off option for employees to prioritize their support team members' personal growth and community engagement, while also cultivating a culture of empathy and social responsibility within the organization.

Further technology investment - By continually reviewing and adopting AI-powered solutions and emerging support trends, including case resolution using robotic process automation, they consistently optimize their ability to reduce time to resolution and elevate customer satisfaction levels, cementing their position as a customer-centric organization.

Zywave won a Silver Stevie Award for Best Use of Technology in Customer Service – Computer Industries, and Bronze in the category of Achievement in the Use of Data & Analytics in Customer Service in the 2023 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the 2024 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service?

Stevie-winner SmartBear provides a portfolio of trusted tools that give software development teams around the world visibility into end-to-end quality through test management and automation, API development lifecycle, and application stability, ensuring each software release is better than the last. Award-winning tools include SwaggerHub, TestComplete, BugSnag, ReadyAPI, Zephyr, and PactFlow, among others.

The company’s mission is to be the first choice for software development teams of all sizes, giving them the tools to immediately impact the delivery of tomorrow’s applications. The tools they develop are built to streamline clients’ processes while seamlessly working with the products they currently use and will continue to use. 

In the 2023 Stevie^® Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the SmartBear Test Management Team, led by Jeannie Kobert, Director of Customer Care Engineering at SmartBear, won a Bronze Stevie Award for Customer Service Complaints Team of the Year - Technology Industries. 

Integrating Open Source and Openness Altogether
SmartBear’s philosophy is not only to embrace open source, but openness altogether, which includes diversity, equity, and inclusion. With these principles as their foundation, they ensure that their tools are easy to try, easy to buy, and easy to integrate. 

The SmartBear Test Management team, consisting of the Zephyr Enterprise and Zephyr Squad product lines, provides 24/5 technical support to a global set of customers located in AMER, EMEA, and APAC. The team supports both SaaS and On-Premises (server and data center) solutions and provides expertise for all aspects of product usage and configuration, as well as resolving the most difficult technical issues. 

The Test Management team also includes Zephyr Scale products, SaaS, and On-Premises (server and data center) solutions and provides  similar technical services as Zephyr Enterprise and Zephyr Squad.

The Test Management team has consistently received high Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores and tracked at a high level against their published service level agreements (SLAs), keeping their customers happy. In fact, the team has been able to retain an elevated level of customer service consistently when it was particularly challenging during the pandemic and great resignation in 2020 and beyond. This is due to the team’s commitment to customer service by increasing man hours, utilizing development resources, and taking advantage of an innovative cross-training plan the team adopted last year.

Leading by Example
By committing to ethical corporate practices that promote good, SmartBear has pledged to continue building quality businesses in their global communities through integrity.

They are committed to taking the journey toward becoming a leader in corporate social responsibility as they grow. To that end, they have a group of senior leaders who meet regularly as a working group to focus on the areas of Community, Sustainability, Governance, and Diversity.

SmartBear is trusted by over 16 million developers, testers, and software engineers at 32,000+ organizations—including innovators like Adobe, JetBlue, FedEx, and Microsoft.

The SmartBear Test Management Team won a Bronze Stevie Award for Customer Service Complaints Team of the Year - Technology Industries in the 2023 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the 2024 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service? 

The sixth annual Women|Future Conference, held virtually from August 1-2, brought together over 650 ambitious, forward-thinking women across industries and career stages to connect and discuss key issues that impact their industries, careers, and lives.

A professional development, learning, and networking event, the Women|Future Conference brings together a community of women small business owners, executives, entrepreneurs, and professionals interested in starting a business. Attendees tuned in from cities across the United States, Canada, Australia, Asia, and Europe.

The 2023 conference agenda featured two days of panels, workshops, and breakout sessions hosted by over 30 world-class speakers, including CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and small business consultants from The Audacious Agency, MENTOR New York, Jennings Social Media & MarTech, and others. 

Speakers also included seasoned leaders from global organizations like Microsoft's Corporate Vice President - Global Industry Marketing; SAP's Chief Marketing & Solutions Officer; and the Founder and CEO of Fempire, the #1 global coaching brand for women business owners.

Top Attended Sessions From #WomenFuture23
Throughout the two-day conference, attendees participated in sessions about business networking, work-life balance, wealth attraction, overcoming adversity, mentorship, and more. Below are the top conference sessions attended:

• Turning Passion Into Profit as an Entrepreneur
• From Wages to Wealth: Making the Shift from Employee to Entrepreneur
• Taking the Leap: How to Transfer Your Skills from One Role to the Next
• Should I Enter the Stevie Awards? Learn How Leaders Leverage Awards to Boost their Business and build Credibility

On Day 1 of #WomenFuture 23 in the session “Funding Female Futures: Navigating the Investment Landscape and Bootstrapping Success” two female entrepreneur and funding experts, Marnie LeFevre, Founder & CEO of Fempire, and Mez Gallifuoco, Founder & CEO of The Mad Ones, delved into the realities of the investment landscape for women and shared valuable insights on identifying the right investors and business opportunities. 

With her international coaching brand Fempire, Marnie has made it her mission to inspire women to step up and lead with courage, confidence, and from the feminine. Mez is an award-winning technology entrepreneur and strategist for some of the world’s most innovative companies including QBE, AMEX, Virgin Australia, and several startups in Sydney and New York.

Early in the discussion, Mez relayed that men in business are often asked, “What will you do with success?” while women are more likely to be asked, “How will you overcome all these challenges?” Women are sometimes viewed as already disadvantaged in the business space, in some sectors more than others. Even if you have a brilliant idea and are fully committed to making it work, it can be quite intimidating when it comes to getting your vision off the ground, she said,  especially when it comes to learning about and gaining funding, and then growing it.

Before trying to go directly to investors and trying to push a business plan at them, both Mez and Marnie recommend aiming for casual and helpful conversations with investors first. Instead of calling to abruptly ask someone to review your data and plan, just ask them for coffee. Have a conversation about what you’re trying to achieve, what insights they may have, and try to create a connection. 

“Start asking questions—gain advice. Use them as a mentor, and even if they're not prepared to invest in your business, at least you can gain a whole lot of insight. It's about building a relationship before sticking out your hand,” noted Mez.

She emphasized that who the founders are and who your team members are (and how adept or skilled they are) is even more important than your business plan or statistics. When it comes to finally making the pitch for funding, Mez related her own challenges of walking into very intense and critical business meetings. “They barely look at the idea, to be honest. They only really look at, what is the team? do they know what they’re doing….and we’re interested in the founder.” 

Both Mez and Marne agreed that having a well-connected founder—or, even better, multiple founders—who have similar business values can go a long way in securing the relationship and funding. Marne commented: “We're looking for whether we can get along with you, whether we believe in you, whether we think you've got what it takes, whether you have the grit that it takes.”

Day 2 of the conference opened with an instructional session on “How to Write a Winning Stevie Award Nomination” given by Denise O’Leary, MBE. Denise is a 21-time Stevie Award winner and relayed her extensive experience on how she has repeatedly created winning Stevie Award entries. Her company, Purpol Marketing, specializes in marketing strategy development and bid management for public sector contracts across various industries. 

Denise answered many common questions she gets from clients across industries on finding and applying for awards, including:

• Why should you enter awards?
• Where do you find awards to enter?
• How to find the right awards for your business
• What data do you need to consider? 

Denise explained that, based on your specific industry or field, you should build an award target list and track when your targeted awards are open for nominations and what they will require. For example, even the Stevie Awards has eight distinct programs, and, depending on your field, one or a variety of them will get you a different level of exposure to a specific audience, geographic region, or market. Note the deadlines you need to hit and the networking or marketing opportunities they offer. 

She detailed the full Stevie application journey and even provided hints on what judges really want to see. “Play to your individual strengths in your nomination,” she emphasized. “How do you offer better value? How can you explain what you’re doing and make your strengths clear? Prove what you do with tangible evidence.” She covered how to examine your own organization and objectives and then how to tell your personal and business story as well as what types of data should be included with your entry. 

Regarding gathering evidence before writing your Stevie Awards nomination, Denise said, “It’s really important to gather evidence about your business success before writing your nomination. 

• Read all instructions to make sure you’re eligible.” She also advised doing the following: 
• If you’re doing a video, review their specific rules on formatting, length, language, etc.
• Include key performance indicators (KPIs) or other materials in the supporting materials section of the entry submission, like customer testimonials, photos, case studies, etc.
• Include a folder of press coverage to share, if available. 

“Think about what the judges would like to see. Think about their process,” she noted. “If you need to proofread your nomination more than once a day to make sure it’s perfect, you should. Explain in simple terms what your business does so it’s clear to any judge why you should win a Stevie Award.”

She said you will want to keep track of progress, store, and revisit old nominations you’ve written. In addition, after entering Stevie Awards competitions, all entrants can access the judge’s comments. This feedback can serve as an invaluable asset for guidance on areas the judges were impressed with and how entry nominations can be improved in the future.

In an educational panel discussion, "Make Your Mark: How to Build a Network with Trusted Mentors" that took place on Day 2, speakers explored how to build social capital and a network you can count on.

Brenda Jimenez, CEO of MENTOR New York, led this panel, and other speakers included Alana Beard, four-time WNBA Champion and President of the 318 Foundation and Founder of Transition Play; Dr. Elizabeth Santiago, author, educator, designer, and leader; and Cicy George, Senior, Organizational Capability at Macy’s. These panelists have made their marks in different industries with an interesting story of how they’ve each become supporters of each other in ways that led to career successes.

Panelists initiated the conversation by examining the concept of social capital—the connections built and nurtured over time that may have beneficial professional implications—and how women specifically can work toward building this capital. For women especially, they agreed, it can be hard simply to ask for help and be vulnerable with a mentor. 

Alana commented: "I encourage [those she mentors] to be to be as vulnerable as possible in these moments because there's no way for people to really understand who you are and what you're going through and what your desires are if you don't speak about them.”

Elizabeth added another perspective, noting that getting comfortable relaying your needs and challenges not only helps you find the help and support you need but also enables you to validate and encourage others with your own experiences once you come out on the other side:

“For me, this is where storytelling comes in. As I look back at my life and my career and all the things that have happened and led me to where I am….there are so many people involved, so many stories, so many ways that I've asked for help over the years that I often share those experiences or share an anecdote about something and usually that helps someone else.”

They explained that self-reflection and conscious awareness of your strengths and, even more so, your weaknesses will help to solidify a sense of confidence and self-worth. The sooner you do the inner work and get past the common feeling of imposter syndrome, the faster you and others will see your potential. In a perfect example of how to be authentic and vulnerable with your peers, Cicy shared part of her personal journey with self-worth and acceptance:

“I've only recently gotten more comfortable with feeling like I am enough, and I feel like I have a hidden greatness that I have yet to unleash. That's just a realization I feel I've come into just now in my early 40s. It's taken me a long time to get here — even just to admit in a global forum that I'm in my early 40s—and I'm just learning some of these lessons now that I wish I had learned earlier on in my life and my career.” 

Special Thanks to Our 2023 Sponsors and Partners​
We are proud to partner with publications, media outlets, and organizations that share our mission of supporting women in business:

• Enterprising Women Magazine
• ImageShield
• Investably LLC
• MBE Magazine
• Professional Woman’s Magazine
• Trust Relations 

If you are interested in sponsorship opportunities for the 2024 Women|Future Conference, sign up here to get notified of the 2023 prospectus release.

Stevie-winner Domo, Inc. is a cloud-based platform designed to provide direct, simplified, real-time access to business data for decision-makers across the company with minimal IT involvement.

Domo’s business management platform turns data into insights and gives customers the context they need for faster, better-informed decisions. Traditional reporting methods often result in backlog, but Domo automates those processes by connecting to data in real time.

Domo’s low-code data app platform goes beyond traditional business intelligence and analytics to enable anyone to create data apps to power any action in their business, right where work gets done. With Domo’s fully integrated, cloud-native platform, critical business processes can now be optimized in days instead of months or more.

Female Employee of the Year in Business, Nikki Walker
Nikki Walker is the Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) at Domo, where she works with a team of professionals to elevate and amplify Domo’s mission and values in the workplace and in the community. She does so by creating and driving programs and initiatives focused on diversity and inclusion, workplace equity and belonging, and community engagement.

Nikki leads Domo’s newly formed DEI leadership council, which represents multiple voices from around the organization to bring a more contextual application of DEI best practices and outcomes across the entire business. In addition to helping advance a culture of belonging, Nikki also focuses on creating employment pipelines and supporting student leadership programs that help build and nurture a more diverse pool of qualified talent for the tech industry.

Prior to her current role, Nikki was Director of Community Engagement wherein she created and managed programs for Domo that aligned with community partners. In addition, she runs the Domo for Good initiative, a social good program designed to leverage the Domo platform in collaboration with nonprofits, bringing the power of data to help solve society’s most pressing issues.

She has also partnered with the Multicultural Subcommittee of the COVID-19 Community Task Force's digital equity team to address the racial injustices facing the Black community.

Nikki currently serves on the board of directors for Encircle, The Road Home, and The Children’s Center, as well as the Utah Tech Leads PAC, the Foundation Board, and the President’s Cabinet of Salt Lake Community College. Nikki is also a member of The KUED Advisory Board and is an active member of the NAACP, the Utah Black Chamber, and the Junior League of Salt Lake City.

As a professional communicator and a strong advocate of leaving a place better than it was, Nikki has set out to educate the public on becoming more accepting of Black lives. Serving the community is Nikki’s passion, and she's dedicated to spreading the importance of diversity and inclusion at every level of community, business, and government through both her personal and professional endeavors.

Domo’s commitment to multiplying impact extends to its local community through donations of time, funding, and expertise to help build and foster the next generation of tech talent and leadership.

Domo’s Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Nikki Walker won a Bronze Stevie^® Award for Female Employee of the Year - Business in the 2022 Stevie Awards for Women in Business. 

Interested in entering the 2023 Stevie Awards for Women in Business? 

Regalix is a global leader partnering with companies on revenue operations, customer experience, and thought leadership. They are a growth-based enterprise that helps digital platforms drive growth from their mid-market and small/medium business (SMB) segments by handling the whole range of sales/growth lifecycle. 

For 10+ years across 16+ countries, Regalix has been driving revenue growth for digital platforms by selling their complex services to SMBs and assisting them in building their sales infrastructure, contributing to more than $10 billion in revenue for world-renowned brands.

They have helped over 150+ iconic Fortune 500 brands, including Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Cisco, and others, unlock opportunities and business possibilities at scale.

Highlighted Projects
For one client, Regalix enabled increased ad adoptions among its SMB markets and helped increase the business's revenue by 3.5X. They achieved this by implementing targeted marketing campaigns focused on the businesses' specific needs and pain points. 

This included creating tailored ad packages that offer more cost-effective solutions for smaller budgets and providing education and resources to the advertisers on the benefits of utilizing ads. Ultimately, the brand increased its overall revenue by 81% within two years, while the total cost of generating this revenue remained the same.

For another client from the F&B sector, they helped increase merchant adoption by 95%. They significantly increased the client's success in pre-sales activities by implementing targeted marketing campaigns that effectively reached their target audience.

Additionally, they streamlined the merchant signup process. In post-sales activities, they focused on providing onboarding support. Overall, these strategies increased the client’s merchant base with a conversion ratio of 51%, increased revenue by 88%, and improved customer satisfaction.

Ingredients to Success
Regalix’s secret to achieving success on a much higher level when compared to its competitors is due to its in-house AI-based platform designed to help train and assist sales reps in all aspects of call management, from initial training to ongoing skill development.

The platform streamlines the sales process and allows for end-to-end lifecycle management, resulting in a faster ramp-up time for new reps, a higher ROI, and an overall improvement in sales performance.

One of the key features of the platform is its comprehensive training modules. These modules cover all aspects of the sales call process, from basic selling techniques to advanced strategies for closing deals. The interactive and engaging modules make it easy for sales reps to learn and retain the information.

The platform offers AI-based pitch intelligence and a coaching feature. The coaching feature allows reps to boost their confidence with virtual pitch practice. This helps reps to improve their skills and techniques on the fly. In addition to training and coaching, the platform also helps to refine sales reps' skills. It tracks key performance metrics such as call duration, conversion rates, and win/loss ratios which managers can use to assess progress.

This AI-based platform provides a powerful toolset to help train and assist our sales reps, ensuring they have the necessary skills to succeed and providing feedback and guidance to help them improve their performance.

Regalix won a Bronze Stevie^® Award for Account Management Team of the Year in the 2023 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the 2024 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service? 

Stevie-winner Searchspring is an agile site search, merchandising, and product recommendation solution taking e-commerce findability to the next level. Searchspring enables brands to get the right product, to the right person, at the right time.

Searchspring was founded in 2007 in Colorado Springs with a vision of creating a platform that would provide state-of-the-art site search and merchandising to online retailers. It was soon discovered there was a huge demand for this technology due to gaps in native e-commerce platforms.

At its core, Searchspring is dedicated to helping brands deliver the ultimate shopper experience through its search, merchandising, and personalization platform. To accomplish this mission, the company has prioritized the success of its clients and growing a team that fully supports and understands the needs of merchants.

Since its early days, Searchspring created separate customer support and customer success teams designed to address clients’ technical and strategic needs, respectively. The support team works on the technical complexities of the solution. The success team provides strategic guidance on how to deliver the right product to the right person at the right time. Together, the teams collaborate and ensure they provide best-in-class service, serving nearly 1,500 brands in the past 15 years.

Searchspring’s teams are motivated by serving clients’ strategic needs first, rather than the bottom line. When clients see that Searchspring’s customer support team has no underlying motives to sell more solutions, clients have greater trust in Searchspring’s solutions and the company overall. 

Searchspring’s team is also trained to approach each client uniquely. While many other teams take a cookie-cutter approach for all clients, Searchspring’s team treats each client’s site individually.
Another key factor to Searchspring’s success is bringing good people to the company. Searchspring knows that to provide the best customer experience to brands, the company needs to hire the right people for its clients. Searchspring does this by hiring slowly, which ensures it builds a team that has both retail and e-commerce experience, as well as diverse skill sets. Searchspring’s team members truly understand the shopping journey, which enables them to help clients create the best e-commerce experience for customers like.

Since Winning a Stevie
Recently, Searchspring has experienced exponential growth by investing in its product, process, and team. In 2022, Searchspring signed over 250 new customers and secured an investment from PSG, a leading growth equity firm.

To maximize the reach and success of its product portfolio, Searchspring expanded its leadership team to include a new chief customer officer, chief technology officer, and senior vice president of global sales.

In response to the company’s steadfast pursuit of customer satisfaction, Searchspring was recognized by several award programs since submitting for the Stevie^® Awards, including San Antonio Business Journal’s Business of the Year.

Searchspring won a Bronze Stevie Award for Front-Line Customer Service Team of the Year - Technology Industries in the 2023 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the 2024 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service? 

Stevie-winner STEM Punks’ mission is to “Inspire Tomorrow's Innovators” to create 21st-century learners through a mindset of innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship. All programs are curriculum aligned and linked with industry to give children career prospects and pathways. 

After researching trends in overseas education, a gap in the market for quality STEM education for children in Australia led Fiona Holmstrom and Michael Holmstrom to co-found STEM Punks (out of their suburban garage) almost five years ago.

At the time, STEM wasn’t part of the national curriculum. They saw the need for quality STEM education for children, providing them with learning outcomes aligned to the national curriculum, not just for entertainment value.

Their mission is to bring STEM education to less fortunate communities, focusing on remote areas and predominantly primary and high schools. Random parties historically service it, providing sporadic STEM education programs through external providers, with an inadequate focus on long-term upskilling teachers and remote support. 

STEM Punks provides leading, award-winning educational programs that support teachers and students to learn about STEM and be skilled for the jobs of the future. 

Scaling STEM Punks Nationally
What started as market testing with the local community had such a rapid uptake from parents and teachers that the business scaled up nationally. Since then, they have inspired and educated over 150,000 young people.

Last year, in a move to bring STEM education to a wider audience, STEM Punks TV was created. It's a world-first streaming platform dedicated to STEM education. The OTT (over-the-top) platform is available on iOS, Android, and Web, and provides leading STEM education to enable equity and equality in STEM education for children across the globe.

They have also formed a new global collaboration between the not-for-profit LING Project (Literacy In Northern Ghana) in Ghana to build literacy for females in the region and help schools and communities access tools, training, and support.

Tackling Stereotypes Around STEM
A particular passion of Fiona’s, getting girls into STEM in and after school in their careers builds a sustainable global female STEM network for integration of students, female leaders, and industry mentors, inspiring a new generation of innovators and entrepreneurs. 

Studies show that by educating girls in lower socioeconomic demographics, their families and communities also prosper, with a flow-on effect boosting the economies of smaller towns around the world. When these girls finish school and start their own companies, they help grow the nation’s economy as part of the business ecosystem. If we don’t invest in girls, the ripple effect is alarming, impacting well-being and the economy.

Fiona tackles the stereotypes around STEM, creating visibility around a wide range of careers. She interviews women in STEM all over the world, not just focusing on conventional jobs, but the whole gamut of STEM careers. She challenges the mainstream mindset around learning for the benefit of students. There's a core belief in society that learning must demand self-discipline from learners.

Since Winning Their Stevie^® Awards 
Over the past 18 months, STEM Punks have innovated by introducing a world-first streaming platform for STEM Education, STEM Punks TV.

They have also launched space education programs across the world, resulting in a Guinness World Record for the largest STEM lesson in Dubai in 2022. They are expanding their ed-tech program with the recent opening of an office in Austin, Texas.

STEM Punks won a Gold Stevie Award for Most Innovative Company of the Year - 10 or Less Employees and Co-founder Fiona Holmstrom won a Bronze Stevie Award in Women Helping Women - Social Change in the Stevie Awards for Women in Business.

Interested in entering the 2023 Stevie Awards for Women in Business?

Stevie-winner Output is a global leader in music creation, inspiring people at all levels—from newcomers to professionals. Output develops innovative software and gear for musicians, composers, producers, and sound designers across all genres.

Launched in 2013, Output’s software is used by hitmakers such as Kendrick Lamar, Bjork, Justin Timberlake, Rihanna, Imagine Dragons, Coldplay, and Drake, to name a few. It has also been used to create musical scores for films and shows such as Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, and more.

The Output Customer Support team lives and breathes music. They describe themselves as a group of professional musicians who decided that they wanted to work with and help other musicians be creative. The Support team originally started in 2016 with a two-person team taking requests via email. Slowly that evolved into using a traditional support ticketing system.

Shifts in the Global Music Industry
By 2020 during the height of the pandemic, their flagship product Arcade hit an all-time high for users. In addition to Arcade, they were having record sales in plugins/instruments and for their studio hardware line of products.

The team needed to scale even more, as they saw upwards of 50k support tickets per year. With long wait times and inefficient procedures, making a change was necessary. At the end of 2021, they brought on a seasoned Customer Service Manager. With fresh leadership onboard, they then made immediate changes to daily operations, such as internal meeting management and incorporating SMS and social media channels for users.

The past three years brought on massive changes to the world and the music industry. Musicians started creating their own home studios, and recording at home was more popular than ever. Companies like Output had to scale and quickly. When they assessed their Customer Support, they determined the need to find better strategies, looking to achieve faster response times and improve their knowledge base and overall customer satisfaction.

Working on three areas essentially had a domino effect. By improving the customer knowledge base, users are able to easily find the troubleshooting steps they need without even contacting support. But if they need to contact support, getting back to them as quickly as possible is extremely important—if they are waiting for a solution that means they are not working or creating. By improving their first-response time from 30+ hours to 5 hours, users were able to get back to work quicker and increased the overall satisfaction rate.

They also enhanced processes for their internal team by creating career paths for each support team member. Many reps are able to split their time between Support and other teams (e.g., QA, Edu, Product) eventually leading to a promotion and/or more responsibilities. In the past two years, five members of the support team have been promoted to Senior Support Rep or are leading a project outside of support.

Since earning their Stevie^® Award, Output has continued to improve on their user promise of "keeping you in session," by improving first-response times, adding new options to contact Support, and overall improvements in products. They are now exploring ways to add more self-service options for users and are incorporating AI into workflows.

Output won a Silver Stevie Award for Front-Line Customer Service Team of the Year - Technology Industries - Software in the 2023 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

Interested in entering the 2024 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service? 

As a principal dancer, Stevie-winner Sara Ordway captivated audiences across the nation, but her true passion has always been art education. In 2018, she founded the Ordway Conservatory of Classical Ballet, and it immediately became a place where students could feel seen, heard, and respected. 

Sara understands how to get children out of their shells and help them recognize the amazing things they are capable of as dancers and as people. Her students have been recognized in the dance world at international competitions and in the local community. 

One of Sara's greatest skills is creating entertaining performances. The greatest example is her show, “An Interactive Nutcracker”—a Nutcracker performance unlike any other where audience children get a chance to go on stage, see the production up close, and feel what it's like to be onstage. 

Sara's life was changed by dance, and she is passionate about giving that to as many children and adults as possible. She teaches her students and staff that the way you treat others matters—that is the magic, not perfect technique.

Ballet During a Global Pandemic
During the beginning of the pandemic, when Ordway Conservatory had to close its doors, students continued to thrive through Sara's leadership. Not a day of classes was missed in the transition to virtual learning.

Sara provided virtual events for the community like Teach Your Family to Dance Night, trivia night, craft night, a fashion show, virtual prom, and more. The overwhelming feedback at that time was that dance was what the kids looked forward to more than anything else—that it made them happy and gave them a sense of normalcy. 

When doors could reopen, Sara worked with a local park to move all performances to an amphitheater. Throughout the 2020-2021 school year, Sara worked to help students excel in and out of the studio. She started creating affirmations for her students and having them journal at the start and end of each class. This taught them about goal setting and gave them an opportunity to check in with themselves after being in quarantine for so long.

During the 2021-2022 school year, Sara's business skills began to shine. She created new programs including a mommy-and-me class and an adult ballet program. She also created new revenue streams through events such as a studio-wide movie night and parent's night off. 

At a time when performances around the world were being canceled, even by top-tier companies with endless resources, Ordway Conservatory continued to perform. Many dance studios did not survive the pandemic, but Ordway Conservatory thrived and continued to grow while entertaining the local community.

Expanding Programs for the Community
Sara is currently creating a preschool program with the hope that she can touch more lives with the many benefits of dance such as increased confidence, health and leadership skills, and improved brain function.

Most dance studios are satisfied with only providing a great dance education. Sara wants more for her students and her business. She continues to add classes that fill up, create events that increase revenue, and start new programs that will reach more of the community and change their lives for the better through dance. All while increasing revenue to be able to support the growth her business is seeing.

Sara continues to educate herself by attending classes and workshops on business, childhood development, and dance. She consistently goes above and beyond to enhance the customer journey in her business and to improve the workplace for her employees.

Artistic Director and Founder of Ordway Conservatory of Classical Ballet, Sara Ordway won a Bronze Stevie^®Award for Best Female Entrepreneur in the 2022 Stevie Awards for Women in Business. 

Interested in entering the 2023 Stevie Awards for Women in Business? 

An esteemed financial planner and the Founder and CEO of Australia-based Endurance Financial, Stevie-winner Amanda Thompson excels at delivering strategic and tailored advice to businesses and individuals, drawing upon almost two decades of experience. 

She isn’t afraid to share that she is also a survivor of sexual assault, a heart attack, and melanoma. She says that “while I do not let these experiences define me, they have taught me invaluable life lessons that I apply to the way I run my own business as well as my mentorship of other women in business. The challenges I have faced have gifted me grit, determination, and passion.” She attributes these gifted lessons as enabling her to qualify three times for the Ironman World Championships.

As a keynote speaker at events around the country, she is committed to sharing her experiences with others. She is particularly driven to help women overcome the gender biases that stand in the way of personal achievement. Through the lessons she learned thriving in typically male-dominated environments, her goal is to mentor others to find the power of resilience, determination, and dedication.

Leveraging Lessons Learned to Educate Others
In Australia, more than one in three business owners are women. Despite this, the odds are stacked against them. Institutional and market failures create more financial barriers for women in business and limit access to resources, skills, credit, and/ or capital to enable their businesses to grow. According to the Australian Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry, less than half of women business owners actually pay themselves a wage. 

She recognized that she couldn’t help the hundreds of thousands of her fellow Australian women business owners struggling to achieve financial freedom on a one-on-one basis; in part, because so many of them simply don’t have the means to access one-on-one consulting. Thus, she set out to innovate and develop a scalable, comprehensive, accessible, and low-cost product. 

Launched in February 2022, Financially Fit Women provides education, mentoring, and coaching for women business owners who:

• know they need to understand the numbers but don’t know where to start;
• are working really hard but don’t seem to be making a profit;
• wish they had a full-time finance department; and
• are feeling alone and potentially vulnerable – and would love to connect with a network of similar-minded women who are all looking to grow.

The 12-week online course includes six self-paced digital modules, six group sessions connecting participants with their peers, and three one-on-one mentoring sessions with Amanda. The course was born from extensive research and consultation, including market research, situation analysis, and consultation with clients and prospects to assess knowledge gaps.

The course content was developed from Amanda’s expertise in business and finance in addition to collaborating with experts in other fields such as legal, marketing, and mortgage brokering to provide a holistic financial education offering.

Financially Fit Women is the first-ever financial education course developed specifically for women business owners in the Australian market.

To make the course accessible to those who can benefit most, they offer a fully sponsored position in each course to a woman who is not able to pay. This position is filled based on nominations from the business community. An ongoing membership community is available to participants who would like continued coaching and support, and all membership revenue is donated to organizations working to support victims of domestic violence.

Above all, the Financially Fit Women program is grounded in a desire to create long-lasting social impact by contributing to: 

• Women business owners paying themselves a proper wage, leading to financial freedom and independence 
• Women-led businesses being afforded opportunities to secure capital and resources, enabling them to grow
• Women-led businesses experiencing more growth, creating more jobs and having a positive economic impact 
• Improved workforce participation with less women dropping out of self-employment 

It is Amanda’s aim that Financially Fit Women will turn women business owners and entrepreneurs into astute CFOs with focus, direction, and a tailored game plan. 

Recently, to complement the course, Amanda’s team developed and launched a Financial Bootcamp aimed at all females to be able to access a base of information with ease and affordability, slowly but very surely closing the gaps within all aspects of finance for women.

Amanda also launched a new book titled Financially Fit Women, which helps women understand what truly matters when looking at their numbers, giving them the confidence, knowledge, and power to be financially fit.

Endurance Financial Founder & CEO Amanda Thompson won a Gold Stevie Award for Women Helping Women - Business in the 2022 Stevie® Awards for Women in Business.

Interested in entering the 2023 Stevie Awards for Women in Business?