The CEO of productivity app company Evernote admitted it “has some work to do” on its core proposition, as he promised to focus on the basics to best position it for the future.

While Evernote was an early success story in the productivity app market, it has found its core proposition come under intense competition from third-party developers and the capabilities built into device platforms themselves. And its most recent foray into the spotlight was when it lost a number of senior execs, as a precursor to the departure of the then-CEO.

In a blog post, Ian Small (pictured), who took the helm in October 2018, said it is “a bit disingenuous for me to try to get our most dedicated users all fired up about inventing the future of Evernote when exactly those same people are the ones who know best that sync doesn’t always work right”.

“Or that Evernote on Windows is a bit tired, and is missing features that are found on the Mac version. Or that each version of Evernote seems to work slightly differently, and exhibits its own unique collection of bugs and undesirable behaviours. Or that Evernote on mobile devices sometimes feels like a pared-down version of a powerful desktop app, instead of a mobile-first view into a powerful cloud-enabled productivity environment.”

Small said that moving forwards, the company is looking to offer a more consistent experience across the products it offers, which “fixes the essential features on which all of us depend”. Other goals are making changes to its development and delivery programmes, so that it can ship faster across all the devices it supports; and improving the infrastructure which sits behind Evernote, to offer better speed, reliability and scalability.

On a more positive note, the CEO said that he has reviewed the company’s financial health, “which I’m pleased to report is extremely sound”.