Ask Reuben – March 2, 2026

Quarterly Business Review

What is a Quarterly Business Review (QBR)?

I find that communication is most effective when a speaker has something of value to say, and when the listener is motivated and ready to listen.  I was recently on the wrong side of a communication issue where the speaker had something to say but the target audience was not ready to listen.  I am a dual citizen of  both New Zealand (NZ) and United Kingdom (UK) and was caught up in the changes the UK have made to how dual citizens can enter the UK.  According to a BBC article on the subject …

A Home Office spokesperson previously told the BBC that “public information advising dual nationals to carry the correct documents has been available since October 2024 and a substantive communications campaign about the introduction of ETA has been running since 2023”.

I don’t know what this “substantive communications campaign” consisted of but I don’t know how one could target any form of effective communication to the diaspora of UK dual citizens spread around the globe.  Why would I be looking out for messages alerting me to changes as to how I can legally enter the UK when I am not planning to enter the UK?

At Four Js we have a closer knit community and in theory it should be easier to communicate with all our developers, but even then it is surprising when finding developers who are unaware of information that we think has been communicated.  I think in our case we have some communication tools that simply are not effectively monitored by our community when they should be.

Despite the following …

… we still find that we have added functionality, made changes, and our community is blissfully unaware of them.  They only notice when their program does something different and they then raise a support call, only to be told that this a change many versions / several years ago.

With communication in the other direction, we are often the last to know of initiatives, changes, and issues at your organisation that impact us.

The introduction of the Quarterly Business Reviews (QBR) is something designed to ensure that there is regular effective two way communication between ourselves and each of our customers.

The QBR is intended to be a short 1-2 hour discussion, in-person or virtual, across a wide range of commercial and technical topics.

Having already done first wave of these in my region, I have pointed my customers at a number of resources they were unaware of including…

Going the other way, I have learnt things about my customer base and the environment in which they operate in which we can hopefully take onboard.

So if you find your local contact wanting to spend more time with you, asking more questions etc, please engage with them.  Listen to what they have to say, but also tell us what is going on within your organisation and what issues are impacting you, so that both parties can work better together.