2023 was another record-breaking year for our #OneDigi team at Digi International. We were spinning out so many records that we felt like DJs! Come along and take a quick tour of our annual year-in-review highlights as well as our outlook for the future.
Exciting Metrics of Growth and Business Health
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
Okay, we also sometimes feel like pirates, when ARR is all the buzz around the office. Annual Recurring Revenue is one key metric of the health of a business like ours.
What does it mean? The most important thing to know is that any IoT device manufacturer can sell a box or an embedded module and tout its features and functionality. But how do they stand behind that offering, help to make sure that it is configured correctly in the field, that it can easily be managed anytime, from anywhere, by an employee with the right access? Do they ensure the device is monitored, that the staff will be alerted in the event of critical issues, and that the device is (and will remain) secure?
The answer is a solution mindset — which means no device is shipped without those critical capabilities. It means the product is part of a holistic solution that is easily configured, managed and maintained across its entire product lifecycle.
Digi has made this transformation over the past five years and we continue to enhance our product and solution offering so customers get the care they need to be successful in this complex IoT-enabled world.
The reason ARR is a hallmark of the health of a business is because in offering complete solutions, we are not a one-time sale business. We provide complete, ongoing support of our customers, which results not only in better care, but recurring revenue. And that builds trust with customers and makes investors sit up and take notice.
I’m happy to report that that we had record ARR in 2023, and our managed services business is thriving and on track to break new records going forward.
More 2023 Broken Records
Broken records may not sound like a great metric, but in this case, we are thrilled. Here are a few more record-breaking highlights:
- Digi experienced double-digit growth in revenues, margins and profits, capping an incredible year!
- We hit our three “100 Goals” for ARR, quarterly revenue and annualized A-EBITDA.
- We grew our global team to a record 825 staff members, keeping our promise to our customers to continually re-invest in our business. Speaking of staffing:
- We improved employee retention to 92% with our focus on employee development and job satisfaction.
- We had an all-time high participation in our employee engagement survey results.
- We remained a hybrid work environment, encouraging office days and face-to-face engagement while supporting flexible work needs and remote employees.
- We launched our new HRMS system, putting an excellent toolset into the hands of our global HR team to support our staff in managing daily needs, staffing, and annual goals.
- Our supply chain team set records with inventory levels, assuring our customers of product availability as we exited the pandemic.
- We also improved our customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score (NPS) to record levels, as a testimonial to our continual drive to make Digi an easy company to do business with, and one that solves our customers’ most complex challenges.
2023 Product and Service Innovations and Rollouts
Our ongoing focus on building reliable, high-performance solutions that support the connectivity journey for customers across a broad range of industries means that we continually enhance our offering. Here are some of our highlights of 2023.
New and Enhanced Software and Services
Software and services enhance and complete our solutions, providing the brains behind the brawn of our high-performing products, and ensuring manageability, security, and ongoing insights for remote management and predictive maintenance.
Here are some things we achieved in 2023:
- Launch of Digi WAN Bonding, offering ultra-fast Gigabit Ethernet speeds and highly reliable connections for critical IoT deployments in enterprise, industrial and transportation use cases. Digi WAN Bonding is available as a value-added service with a Digi Remote Manager subscription.
- Launch of Digi Mobile VPN, supporting persistent, secure connectivity for critical communications. Available as a value-added service with a Digi Remote Manager subscription, Digi Mobile VPN provides a highly secure mobile VPN software solution to address the mission critical communications requirements of emergency responders and others requiring highly reliable connections.
- The launch of Digi XBee® Studio — the next-generation developer toolset for Digi XBee modules — building on the configuration and testing capabilities of Digi XCTU®. Digi XBee Studio supports the Digi XBee Cellular line of modems, and support for Digi XBee RF modules is coming very soon.
Introduction of New Products and Solutions
Across our business units, we were busy building new solutions for our customers across the many verticals we support with IoT and connectivity capabilities — from the most demanding use cases in the industrial and agricultural realms to smart cities and the public sector to enterprise, retail, financial and medical applications.
Here are some of our key rollouts in 2023:
Why is smart out of band management so critical? Opengear, a Digi company, completed extensive research showing that 97% of CIOs identify cybersecurity as a major threat to their organization. At Digi, we continually keep our fingers on the pulse of the cybersecurity industry, while bolstering our device security and the ability of our customers to detect and thwart cyberthreats.
As cellular device manufacturers repeatedly appear in the news for security breaches, we are building trust by developing solutions that integrate cyber defense, automation and sophisticated remote security management to help IT teams bolster security and take quick action when threats are detected. See our blog post on this topic.
Accolades to Channel and Customers, and Giving Back
Of course, company success is not all just about our performance, metrics and new solution offerings. At Digi, we’re committed to a range of cultural imperatives, including diversity and inclusion, and a culture of caring. As part of these imperatives, we believe it is important to showcase the work of our customers and distributors, highlight the amazing efforts our customers are making to improve our environment, and also to give back to the community.
Here are a few exciting highlights from 2023:
What Does the Future Hold for Digi?
As always, when one year comes to a close, we are busy not only celebrating the year’s achievements, but planning our goals for the year ahead. Here’s a sneak peak at where we are going from here:
- New benchmarks of success: We have announced new long-term goals to double ARR and A-EBITDA to $200M within 5 years.
- Software, services and solutions: Continuing our trajectory toward a fully optimized solutions business that supports our customers and wows our investors, we have major planning underway to enhance our software, services and solutions to continually improve the experience of our channel distributors and customers.
- Continued cybersecurity enhancements: This ongoing effort is a key focus, as cyberthreats continue to evolve. We recently launched our SOC2 compliance journey, and will continually enhance the security of our solutions, as well as the ability of our customers to proactively manage their deployed devices.
- Innovation: We will continually focus on process automation, better leveraging AI, and making our customers delighted with great experiences. At Digi, we are focused on continually delivering next-generation solutions to make it faster, easier and more cost-effective for organizations to adapt and grow in the connected world.
We thank our customers, vendors, distributors and investors for putting faith in Digi!
Reach out via our Contact Us page to start a conversation. We would love to hear about your IoT and connectivity goals.
Nächste Schritte