Techstreet 2020 in rearview

This article looks back at the past year for the Techstreet business, and forward to new opportunities to support our customer community in 2021.

 

2020 – Whew!

2020 was a year like no other, and just as it tested the world, it also tested the Techstreet community. The difficulties of 2020 hit us first as parents, as siblings, as children and then as professionals. The global pandemic consumed our personal time and energy, yet the Techstreet team remained committed to providing exceptional services to you, our customers, throughout. We are exceptionally proud of our service delivery and grateful to every one of our customers for your continued business.

 

Flexing our muscles

For the fifth consecutive year, we recognized double-digit growth thanks to the continued loyalty of our customers! It wasn’t without a few course corrections, though. Early in the year, we adjusted to focus on curation of standards packages relevant to air quality and sanitation.

The pandemic and consequent shift to remote work for our customers caused some initial business disruption, but as everyone adjusted, things returned to normal since the need for standards compliance remained a constant throughout. The lion’s share of our growth in 2020 was related to the addition of hundreds of new Enterprise subscription customers. We are excited to welcome all of our new customers to the Techstreet community and grow to meet your needs.

 

Change during a pandemic?

Amongst the turbulence, 2020 also brought change for our group. The largest being the acquisition of Techstreet by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and its Global Knowledge Solutions LLC, a new for-profit subsidiary.

Techstreet has always been a thought leader in the standards industry, but this new partnership creates an even better strategic alignment to the standards world. We’re extremely excited about the support we will get from ASME and know the customer experience will be even better in the years to come.

The show must go on

Numerous standards publishers joined our community in the first part of 2020. A few notable examples are Construction Industry Institute (CII), Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI), Plastic Pipe Institute (PPI), Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA), Welding Research Council (WRC), Wiley Publishing and International Air Transport Association (IATA).

 

Diversification is king

Throughout 2020, we were able to diversify our offerings, allowing us to serve an expanding array of customers across an expanding array of industries. As evidence, our top six new customer accounts for 2020 were from different industries – government, utilities, medical device, engineering, oil & gas and education.

 

Beam me up, Scotty

In response to customer feedback, our product teams were also busy in 2020 making enhancements to the functionality within Techstreet Enterprise. The user experience is always a main priority to our team, so we continue to look ahead and make investments. This past year, we upgraded our customer internal reporting features and built out more functionality within the document repository. For 2021, we’re planning on upgrading to an online document reader with highlighting and annotating capabilities, plus other features to provide reference linking.

 

In response to customer feedback, our product teams were also busy in 2020 making enhancements to the functionality within Techstreet Enterprise.

 

The customer always comes first

With hundreds of thousands of customers come product questions, technical issues and a variety of customer service needs. We worked hard to delight our customers once again and exceeded our 2020 Customer Delight score target. This was no easy task with over 40,000 customer inquiries but over 70% of our inquiries were satisfied on the first call. This was accomplished as we were adding new infrastructure in Australia/New Zealand and launching our new instant chat feature.

Thank you to our customer care team for going above and beyond the call of duty to help all of our customers this year. In 2021 we will work hard to keep each and every customer satisfied through every step of your journey with us.

 

Giving back

Our Techstreet Volunteer Network continued to make charity a priority. We participated in local and global outreach events like:

  • Supporting Men’s physical and mental health through Movember.
  • Pediatric Brain Cancer awareness and research through ChadTough’s virtual 5k.
  • School Supply Collection through Community Action Network, which supports under-resourced families.
  • The 13th Annual Holiday Family Adoption through Three Families, and a non-perishable and canned Food Drive with Hope Clinic supporting medical, dental, food and care to local families in need.

 

2020 timeline

  • January  –  Techstreet finalizes  the development and launch of a private  label retail store for the  Construction  Industry  Institute (CII).
  • March  –  Techstreet  staff  works  remotely without realizing it will be the last  time  being  together in 2020.  Except  for  our print  fulfillment  team, all staff quickly adapted to the remote lifestyle and shifted  priorities to support  the  new content needs deriving from the pandemic.  Print on demand continued  without  skipping a beat.
  • April – Techstreet agrees to terms with one of the largest utilities company in the world for our second largest partnership in 2020.
  • June  – Techstreet celebrated our one-year anniversary with  Standards Australia. The partnership began in 2019  and consisted of a full reseller relationship and private label retail store.
  • August – In the  biggest  win of the year, Techstreet  signs its largest ever government contract.
  • October – Techstreet partners with the Welding Research Counsel (WRC) and begins  hosting  a private label retail store.
  • November – Techstreet is acquired by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and its  Global Knowledge Solutions  LLC, a new for-profit subsidiary.

 

A look ahead to 2021

I fully expect 2021 to be another eventful year. Hopefully we will pull out of the pandemic and begin adjusting to our new normal. Work life will forever be changed and the lines between home and work forever blurred.

At Techstreet, the team will be working hard to realize the opportunities that come as part of joining ASME, and we look forward to communicating the numerous new product improvements we have planned for the months ahead.

In addition, 2021 marks the year of our 25th anniversary, and we look forward to celebrating that significant milestone with you. We have a lot to be thankful for, and I feel truly blessed to be a part of this great business and great industry.

Request information on Techstreet Enterprise