7 Min. Read

2020 was indeed a different year. It was THE year to learn how to be strong, how to innovate, how to learn digitalization, how to appreciate everything we already had, how to grow while isolating yourself, and much more. 

If you ask me, 2020 was the year of the unexpected. It was the year of self-growth, it took a lot in me and everyone to accept the new norms. It took a lot to understand that being alone is normal, that feeling overwhelmed is normal, that feeling lost is normal, that feeling discouraged at times is normal and that being afraid of the abnormal is normal. Just because it’s strange or different does not mean that it’s impossible. In fact, these feelings of the unexpected pushed us to be tougher, to be innovative thinkers, to see the world with a different perspective. It was the push we might have needed and didn’t even know about.

As a company, we celebrated the 5th and 10th anniversary of 9 people, many one-year anniversaries, and disregarding the pandemic, welcomed in many new faces. We have not stopped celebrating the people who insure Optime runs. Without our employees, we would not be the company we are today.

Looking back to March, when we started working from home, the accomplishments and effectiveness of our team members have been impeccable. Who knew this transition would have brought our different offices closer together and allowed us to connect even after work hours with those team members in other countries. If you can recall, earlier this year, we wrote a series of blog posts called “Working From Home, A Series.” It focused on the fact that no matter what was happening around the world, we were never alone. In this series, we gave tips on working effectively from home, setting up boundaries to avoid being burnt out due to working from home, engaging your employees while working from home, and much more. At Optime, we can look back and remember our cooking, makeup, yoga, and Bootcamp classes, and much more, which are very rewarding. Knowing that we were all able to come together virtually after work for activities we loved was a fantastic experience in tough times. 

Not only were we able to be more connected, but we also continued to innovate and never gave up on moving forward. This year, we created this wonderful online community/blog, we hosted several webinars, did giveaways, and started our social media accounts in Spanish and Portuguese due to popular demand. Also, we introduced our new chatbots Bert, Bright, and Vid, and our team members accomplished so many LinkedIn Learning courses to continue learning and being ready for whatever comes next. We even created a new solution called eBrightConnect that no guru or expert believed we could pull off in such a short amount of time. Yet, at Optime, we did it! Just like our CEO, Maria Merce Martin, said, “we were able to develop a solution as innovative as eBrightConnect even though all the gurus and experts said it would be impossible. We did it, and we did it in months. We were extremely successful with the events we were able to do this year, and we know the rest to come will also be successful. We have a live solution ready to be used by everyone in any industry ready to create a virtual event.” 

We not only were able to develop an entirely new digital solution, but we were able to continue to improve our current ones. Video2Market is so powerful that we even created an entire series (Pure Power Series) to show the new and improved features inside an interactive video. 

Our Loyalty Program and eRecognize.me are also very popular solutions. We thank those who have done business with us for trusting the power of recognition and the purpose of these solutions.

We want to thank everyone who worked with us in 2020 for allowing us to be an extension of their team and for trusting us to provide the most effective services to their companies. To all our team members for continually working on innovating our solutions and finding ways to always be better. A special shout out to the people that make this virtual community possible (Maria Merce Martin, Isabela Rosa, Ana Maria Enciso, Mariana Gil, Silvia Torrano, Jesel Silva, Imilse Cepeda, Juan Sanchez, Alexander Daza, Anderson Davila, and Miguel Celis), and of course to the entire Optime team for always being innovative and allowing our virtual community team to have wonderful stories to share with the world.

We look forward to 2021 and the new challenges it will bring. But most importantly, we look forward to continuing to apply everything we have learned in 2020. To continue with the slogan of “business continuity” and use all the lessons learned to continue being innovative.

Can you look back into 2020 and think, what was my biggest challenge and best lesson learned? Let us know in the comments how you plan to continue moving forward in 2021.

Happy New Year!

Business Trends –  THE YEAR OF THE UNEXPECTED 
By: Isabela Rosa December 2020