On behalf of NISC’s Board of Directors and employees, we invite you to take a moment to review NISC’s 2020-2021 Annual Report, which showcases some of the strategic highlights from the past fiscal year and outlines our fiscal responsibility as the stewards of your co-op’s funds. For a complete listing of the 2020-2021 fiscal year’s achievements, please review the timeline below.

NISC’s vision is to enhance the success of our Member-Owners and what a year of opportunity to do just that. As the world was moving to a work from home environment, NISC’s products and services were utilized in a way that hadn’t been done before. As Member-Owners, you were faced with business shutdowns, work from home challenges, social distancing, the beginning of supply chain challenges and countless other problems or as we like to say “opportunities.” These challenges were all being faced at a time when the demand for your products and services was at an all-time high! Never in the history of this country was remote connectivity more valuable to powering this economy and society. While you had to figure out how to maintain your previous levels of service, you were pushed to levels of growth unprecedented in the utility and broadband industries. Our energy sector had natural disasters, COVID-19 pressures and countless other “opportunities” while the demand for reliable power was never more important. You came through those challenges with flying colors. Throughout the year, we worked tirelessly to support your initiatives and meet these unprecedented challenges. The following is a summary of a few of the strategic initiatives that were supported during these times.

NISC transitioned to a work from home environment and assisted our Members in doing the same. During the fiscal year we took more than 250,000 support interactions from the Membership and you gave us the highest satisfaction rankings in our recorded history during this time. We also released 5,000 improvements to the enterprise throughout our normal release schedule providing enhancements that improved your efficiencies while upping the level of services you are able to offer.

While there were thousands of enhancements being released to your products, NISC also launched another piece of our iVUE Connect Enterprise System. iVUE Connect – Marketing allows NISC Members to boost their sales and marketing efforts anywhere, anytime, helping them gauge end-user interest in new services or solutions, more accurately target messages and increase customer satisfaction.

In addition to improved products, we also had a focus on improving the way we serve existing Members. Back in January of 2020, NISC launched the Member Value division. During this fiscal year, we increased staffing and provided additional services to help you better leverage the products you had already purchased.

We also converted many of our standard Member operations to a virtual format including Member visits, business process consulting engagements, workshops and even implementations. Though we greatly value any opportunity to be face-to-face with our Members, we remain dedicated to ensuring Members receive the best experience possible from NISC, regardless of the medium.

In the second half of 2020, NISC continued to focus our efforts on virtual experiences for our Members. With much of the world still in a holding pattern from COVID-19, we were committed to ensuring our service to Members didn’t skip a beat. After making the difficult decision to cancel the Member Information Conference (MIC) for the first time since September 2001, our teams transferred their energy and efforts into planning a virtual event unlike any other. THRIVE was held in October 2020, and more than 4,000 attendees from 700 different Member organizations joined us to hear the latest innovations from NISC.

While NISC thrived in serving our Members virtually, cyber criminals thrived too with new avenues to exploit organizations. We ramped up our cybersecurity offerings to Members in August, deploying Patch Management & Automation, a comprehensive patching system for both operating systems and third-party applications that helps decrease the risk of a security breach while increasing staff efficiency. By December of 2020, more than 400 Members were deployed on the monthly operating system patching schedule. We also continue to release new resources in our NISC CyberSense Education Kit each year, helping to spread cybersecurity awareness and knowledge. This remains a critical focus area for us at NISC.

It was undoubtedly a year of adapting and transitioning, but we are thankful for your partnership and continued support and trust that allows NISC to be in a strong financial position as we navigate new challenges and opportunities. We are also thankful for our incredible employees at NISC who work tirelessly to keep forging ahead. We have many more exciting projects underway for the year ahead, and we look forward to another year of service to our Members.

Regards,

Gary Johnson & Dan Wilbanks