EnSky Corporation 2002 WebAward Ceremony Press Conference Transcript

Susan Osborne speech transcribed from video taken at the Ceremony

Carey Borden, director of alternative delivery systems, and I led the website team. Our vision for StMarysBank.com was to help reposition St. Mary's branding and position the site as a premier financial website.

We wanted the site to be technologically advanced, sophisticated, yet friendly. The site was to be innovative and responsive while providing total financial solutions for our members.

The strategy behind the site's redesign was to upgrade the design, functionality, and content. It was important to us that the users be able to maneuver throughout the site with ease, and to have access to useful content that provides real solutions. And lastly, we wanted to instill confidence in users regarding web security and web safety.

A true partnership was formed when we found the team at EnSky. We knew precisely what we wanted for a website, and EnSky knew how to carry out that vision. And through the process, some unexpected and great ideas were conceived and implemented, resulting in an extraordinary website. Now I'd like to introduce David Flood, President of EnSky.

David Flood Speech transcribed from video taken at the Ceremony

Thank you Susan. At this point, I'd like to thank Al Gore for creating the Internet.

EnSky was founded by my Wife Louise, and I in 1995. Our mission then was to provide our clients with the necessary tools to propel their business into the 21st century. Now that we are in the 21st Century, we are more than ever focused on this goal and have honed our skills and developed a wide breadth of experience and have emerged as one of New Hampshire's leading Web Design Agencies.

At first we designed sites for local companies, then we began getting calls from companies outside of New Hampshire, companies in London, England, San Francisco. We designed sites for manufacturing companies, software companies, towns, high tech sites, sites in retail, real estate, finance and investments, health, entertainment, insurance, non-profits and along the way a few banks.

While other web design companies grew by leaps and bounds, EnSky retained our small but very talented team including Matt Chase, Ryan Szepan, David Weingart and Ken Kelleher.

When we received the letter, an RFQ from Susan at St. Mary's Bank, we had already developed very successful websites for several other banks. We had even won a top award in the New Hampshire Internet Awards, so, we were confident that we would be able to share Susan Osborne and Carey Borden's vision for the next generation website for St. Mary's Bank.

You may wonder how websites are made. What is the process? Do we put the old website through some magical software that spits out the new and improved site? Who does what? Well, I would like take some of the credit for the design, but we wouldn't have won this award if Susan had accepted the first design I came up with.

Web design is a collaborative effort between the designers, like Ken and myself and programmers like David Weingart and Matt Chase, Paul Johnson and his team at Millenia Logix. Kitty Wilbur, the copywriter was contracted to join the team and tasked with the job of creatively composing the content provided by St. Mary's, to be consistent, benefit driven and member focused.

Susan Osborne provided the key role of creative director she had the idea of what she wanted the site to look like and basically pulled it out of me. Then of course Carey Borden, whose responsibility the St. Mary's website ultimately rests, was an integral member of the team managing the development, and a key creative thinker in the design of the enhanced functionality of the site, while maintaining a user-friendly, easy to navigate structure.

As the website project unfolded and the deadline for it's completion drew near I knew that we were creating something special. Upon completion, and launch of the new site, we marvelled in our creation. It surely was one of our finest, and worthy of an award...or so we thought.

We entered it (the St. Mary's website) into the 2002 Web Awards. The same awards where companies like Lucent Technologies, Fed Ex and CISCO would enter their sites. We would be in competition with the big, big web design companies and ad agencies like RazorFish, J. Walter Thompson and Arnold Worldwide. The WebAwards are an international competition, last year, British Airways took home the top award.

We had won in previous years, the organization Web Marketing Association has three tiers of Awards. Several sites in each category receive "Standard of Excellence Awards, only a few choice sites win Outstanding Website Awards and only one site wins the coveted Best of Industry Award.

So you can imagine the look on my face when I received the email notification that simply stated that we had won the Best of Industry Award for StMarysBank.com. For us to be mentioned among these other great companies is a real honor. That we won a best of Industry Award says that...

First, The webawards are definitely not fixed!

Second, There are some really great small privately held web design firms like EnSky that can provide an equal high level of quality in web design as the companies that are traded on NASDAQ.

No, Al Gore did not create the internet, but if you look around the room today, you can see and meet some of the people that have and continue to do so every day.

Now I would like to introduce the President of St. Mary's Bank, Ron Rioux.

Ron Rioux Speech transcribed from video taken at the Ceremony

Thank you David, it's really been a pleasure to work with EnSky. It's been a true partnership from day one, I think the results speak for themselves. It's truly an honor to win this award, as David pointed out if you look at the competition we were up against in the best of show categories, I've limited my comments to just the banking industry. The first time I heard about the award, I thought to myself we we're probably up against similar sized institutions, but It turns out we were competing against both larger and small institutions from all over the United States, so for me that's pretty exceptional, I was extremely pleased of our organization, having won this award. It's a great effort all the way around, David commented on the Staff at EnSky as well as St Mary's I wand to add my own comments in a appreciation of both Susan Osborne and Carey Borden for winning this award on our behalf.

What it says to me is first, here we have two relatively small companies from New Hampshire having achieved this award, when you reflect on that, it's really something, you have two relatively small companies, yes we are talented people but what it illustrates is, that if you have people that are talented that are committed to an objective, we never set to win an award to do this, we set out to accomplish an objective which was to provide a an outstanding website that our members could respond to in a positive way and see the value of it for what it is. I think they've demonstrated that to us already.

I would like to read a comment from one of our members after having experienced the website. I always think the true test of any what people say about after the fact.

"I just wanted to let you know that you have the best on-line banking site. I deal with 4 banks and yours is bar far the fastest and most user friendly, it's been a pleasure dealing with you."

Another one says "I just love the web access to my accounts and your web page is so easy to use, I highly recommend you to all the people that I know."

When you have those kinds of comments, I think it's very gratifying. It certainly tells us we are on the right track. So I couldn't be more happier, so I'm very pleased to accept this award on behalf of our staff, we all worked very hard along with EnSky it's truly a partnership, and the best is yet to come, we continue to work on the site. We designed it initially not so much to sell accounts, but to solve solutions, which is a different approach altogether. Other websites sell products and services, and in fact we try to sell solutions, and I think that that's a big difference.

This past year last years, two years as a matter of fact or entire loan portfolio, loan production rather, in real estate, 25% or 25 million dollars that is originated and actually closed from loans that are received on the website. Now, you wouldn't think that, or at least I didn't initially think that our members would perhaps respond in such a magnanimous way to a website application, but once again I think I've been proven wrong by our very savvy population base in the state of New Hampshire, so I'm happy for that too.

So thank you again, very much, we're very proud of the award. What I'd like to do next is introduce congressman John Sununu, Senator Elect, who has been a strong supporter of the small business community for all of his term in congress, and we've been very grateful for that support. He's also been a real strong friend of the credit union so it's my pleasure to introduce him to you.

John Sununu Speech transcribed from video taken at the Ceremony

Anyone who has lived in New Hampshire for any amount of time knows how important the small business community is to our economy. We take pride in the strength of the entrepreneurs, the environment, the relatively high level of hight tech employment, we feel very strongly about these things.

It's a source of pride when it's recognized by people at the national level, and reaffirmed by people outside and in many ways this is what this website award for St. Mary's is all about. It recognized the entrepreneurs, David and the team at EnSky at being able to put together a world class high tech product for important growing component of our industry-the internet. We don't know exactly where this technology will take us in terms of communication or marketing or productivity, but it's great to know we have entrepreneurs here in New Hampshire that are right on the cutting edge at being able to provide this kind of service.

And it also take a world class financial institution like St. Mary's that can look for new ways to take advantage of the internet, take advantage of a website, take advantage of the inventive team, the entrepreneurial team at EnSky. These two groups come together and the product is really impressive that it is recognized as the best website nationwide in the financial services industry is exciting, it's just nice to be able to be here with such home grown New Hampshire success and be able to pay tribute and present this award. I would like to say congratulations to St. Mary's and the team at EnSky and ask David and Ron to come up so I can present the award.