The Winter holiday season is finally upon us and we have decked the halls of the Green Lemon Company HQ. A festive Christmas tree, beautiful scarlet poinsettias, gold and red baubles here and there and… a game of Jenga.

The Christmas tree, put up by our CEO Matt, really fits in the new space, adding not only festive cheer but also a good touch of green. Whatever baubles were left over have been spread around the office, including on the plates sitting under our lovely potted poinsettias.

This season, however, is about more than just pine trees and garlands. It’s about love, compassion, kindness and generosity, values that were well embedded in our office Secret Santa. Organised by our PM Scott, everyone got given a name to shop for. It was refreshing to see the amount of effort everyone put into finding the right present for their chosen colleague. Some picked presents that, in good fun, poked gently at private jokes and character traits, others tried to fill a gap in that person’s life. The aftermath of the exchange was interesting, to say the least, with Luis speaking to us through the speakers of his karaoke microphone and everyone trying to help Matas in setting up his new self-stirring coffee mug.

A week earlier, however, we had our annual company Christmas dinner. We gathered at The Walrus, one of our favourite pubs in Brighton, for an evening of good food and fantastic company. We shared eco-friendly Christmas crackers, wore paper crowns and gave each other kingly names related to our roles in the company. Matt gave an end of year speech, focusing on what we’ve accomplished in 2019 and what we should look forward to achieving in 2020.

So what have we accomplished this year that we’d set out to do?

Well, one of our goals was to double in size, and we’ve more than conquered that. In 2019 we have tripled not only in talent and team members, but also in capability.

On the topic of doubling in size, another goal for 2019 was to expand our office, which we have done multiple times this year by acquiring smaller offices on the same floor as we hired more talent. Earlier this month we brought down some walls and joined all these spaces together into the new and improved Green Lemon HQ.

We had long planned on fully embracing Disciplined Agile and now can finally say that Agile processes and disciplines are firmly embedded in everything we do.

We had set out to increase our customer base fivefold, which we have also achieved. We now have a growing community of lovely, loyal clients that are shaping the quality of our delivery.

Finally, a big mission for 2019 was to raise our brand resonance to the level of global players and we would like to say that receiving a Partner of the Year Award at OutSystems NextStep this year was the best confirmation we could have gotten that we’ve achieved what we set out to do.

What of next year then?

Well, a big goal for 2020 is our commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility. We will be working alongside OutSystems and Amazon Web Services to create a new online experience for worldwide non-profit organisation Peace One Day, for an estimated audience of 3 billion people around the globe.

To meet the increase in demand for our services, we will be working to at least double our UK-based OutSystems development resources - that means a lot of hiring, which in turn leads to a big focus on internal training and certification processes.

Last but not least, we want to be ahead of the curve, not just ride it. Our spotlight for 2020 will be on hyper-automation, as we have embraced OutSystems’ Intelligent Automation programme. We will continue to invest significant resources into exploring IA solutions, from machine-learning chatbots to fully autonomous RPA.

Contribution, growth, automation - you will hear a lot around these three words coming from us next year.

As we sign off 2019 in the office with party games and pizza slices, we would like to thank all the people that made this fantastic year possible, namely our fantastic customers and suppliers. We are incredibly grateful for all your support and enthusiasm, and we wish you and your loved ones a wonderful Christmas and Winter holiday season.