CEO's end of year message 2015

As we head towards the end of the year, I reflect that 2015 has seen many exciting and challenging changes. As a business we have developed and made progress in all directions.

New worldwide relations

As our business in India continues to grow, I am pleased to announce that we have appointed a new country manager and two regional distributors in Delhi and Kolkata so as to better serve this emerging market.

We recently signed an agreement with COSMOlogic to distribute their software in North America. I have just returned from a successful trade show in Utah promoting their tools for chemical engineers, providing users with highly accurate predictions of the thermochemical properties of pure compounds and complex mixtures. I am looking forward to opening new markets and achieving commercial success with them.

This year also marks the start of some exciting new international customer relationships. CTx in Australia are using Blaze to set up a new virtual screening service for Australian research groups. Our business in China continues to strengthen, with new customers at the Shenyang Pharmaceutical University. Cresset is also strengthening links with China by participating in the Lancaster University China Catalyst programme.

Cresset Discovery Services: A new breed of CRO

Over the summer we considered how best to organise our resources to better serve our customers. As a result we have broadened and re-brand our services business as Cresset Discovery Services (CDS), offering a comprehensive set of solutions for discovery research. We launched CDS at the Boston Fall ACS meeting with the headline ‘A new breed of CRO’ and have received high levels of interest from new prospective customers.

New science driving new software components

A significant software development earlier this year was Activity Atlas, a new component for Forge enabling you to easily summarize complex SAR as a 3D visualization. Our R&D team are working hard on more exciting new developments for 2016 so subscribe to our newsletter to be amongst the first to hear this news.

Outstanding levels of customer service

A recent analysis of our support statistics showed that we have an exceptionally good record for response time. 80% of queries were resolved the same day they were raised, 90% were resolved in 24 hours and 95% were resolved in 48 hours, which includes weekend and Friday afternoon queries. I hope that your personal experience is reflected in these figures. We look forward to continuing this outstanding level of customer service in the years to come so don’t hesitate to contact our support team when needed.

Events

Our User Group Meetings in North America and Europe (picture right) continue to provide an excellent opportunity to hear case studies from customers and learn about new science. I was delighted to receive many complimentary comments following these meetings. We are already building an impressive line-up of speakers for the 2016 meetings where I hope to see you: North America, June 1st; Europe June 16th-17th.

In the spring we continued a successful series of symposia, this time at the British Consulate, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Most recently, we hosted the autumn meeting of the UK QSAR Discussion Group at Duxford, UK.

The first drug discovery patent for Re-Pharm

Last month Re-Pharm, our daughter company, were granted their first drug discovery patent for the re-profiling of an existing marketed drug into a novel set of therapeutic indications for inflammatory conditions. We are excited about the prospects for its further development and eventual out-licensing.

Thank you to all of our valued and loyal customers for the work we’ve done together in 2015. I look forward to future innovations and successes in 2016.

All the best wishes of the season

Rob Scoffin
CEO