Like many companies, 2022 has been a challenging year for us in many ways, and we are proud to have ended the year with a number of new developments and achievements. Many new and excellent partners have said yes to the Blue Colibri App, we have been represented at prestigious events abroad and we have hosted our own professional conference.
We're pleased to offer our partners a wide range of resources, including videos and downloadable documents, to help them succeed before, during, and after implementing our app. Seven Partner Growth webinars were hosted in 2022, with topics including online community building, activation and engagement best practices, and roundtable discussions. In addition, we conducted a redesigned communication workshop at which we provided our partners with practical tips they can apply in their daily work.
Our newly redesigned website, which went live in the fall of last year, features a blog where internal communication and HR specialists can now find fresh content on a regular basis. In addition to professional articles, we support their work with free-to-download e-books and templates for content planning and creation.* We love that you can choose your language preference at the top right of the page on the new website. The speed with which the automatic translator works sometimes surprises us, but rest assured that our translation team is diligently working to fix any mistakes and thoroughly proofread any new texts.
**The fastest way to find out about new content is to subscribe to our newsletter, where downloadable materials are also immediately available without the need to register.
As with the website, there is no longer a language barrier to using the Blue Colibri App, as a Google Translator plugin has been integrated into our system. This is a great help for both company admins and users: no matter what language a content is published in, the app will display it according to the user language set. This will make internal communication smoother and help employees on their first day of work with automated legal documents, for example, as the employment contract can be automatically filled in and sent out. Not to mention the fact that in a multilingual corporate environment, all employees can be reached without the need for a separate translation team or the development of different interfaces for each language.
Our app's new Recognitions feature, introduced last summer, enables workers to send personalized digital "thank you" and recognition "postcards" to one another within the app. Over 12,000 cards and messages of gratitude and recognition have been sent through our system since its launch, effectively supporting the feedback culture of many of our partners. In addition, we have improved our recruitment efforts and made HR's work simpler by introducing an internal employee referral feature into the system.
By the end of 2022, more than 84 000 users had access to the app. Our app is used in 14 different sectors, and it is present in most of the B2B segment. At the same time, Blue Colibri App has already been rated by more than 30 clients on Gartner App, gaining an average of 4.8 star rating!
We accomplished a major objective for 2022 by expanding internationally; our mission is to improve internal communication at businesses around the world. With support for 16 languages and an in-app translator, our app is being used effectively by staff in 10 countries.
We also attended a number of professional events where we were able to showcase our digital solutions, meet our customers and attend other motivational presentations. Besides the biggest HR festivals in Hungary, we also visited Germany, Turkey, Romania, Poland, Croatia and Serbia.
In the meantime, we got so good at attending conferences that we decided to organize one ourselves! The first Connect Conference was a success beyond our most optimistic expectations (read our recap here), and we also held the first Connect Awards ceremony during the conference. The conference featured presentations, case studies and panel discussions from more than 50 speakers representing the largest companies in Hungary, covering the topics of Culture, Content, Channel and Engagement.
As a result of the overwhelming response to the conference, we have decided to launch a weekly online magazine focused on the aforementioned topics, called Connect Magazine. And for those in the HR and communication fields, the Connect Conference will return in 2023, on April 20.
We are continuously developing not only our app but also our team: in the autumn we held a two-day bootcamp, where we focused on strategic development and planning, in addition to celebrating our 100th partner.
We also planned a number of parties and other events to foster teamwork. We celebrated our third anniversary in February, held a cookout in June, and gave thanks to one another in November. In December, we held our end-of-year and Christmas party, which we were able to do in a new, more modern office. The move was much needed as our team grew to 34 people by the end of the year with 15 new members.
In 2023, we plan to continue our global expansion and provide even better services to our partners and potential customers. Our mission is to build the most useful platform for employees, to establish ourselves as a leading force in the field of internal communication and human resources, and to provide expert guidance and content to our business partners and other interested professionals.
