North America Progress

We saw another KnowledgeSmart first this week... our first ever review on respected industry news site, ENR.com.  Senior McGraw Hill Construction Editor, Tom Sawyer, saw our recent press release about the Club Revit skills contest and got in touch. A number of customers agreed to speak to Tom on our behalf, for which we are extremely grateful, and the resulting article went live this week.

Click here to read Tom's article in full.

It's good timing, as expanding our customer numbers in the US and Canada remains our number one export priority.  Although still early days, we have doubled our customer numbers and revenues over the past year and expect to double again in the year ahead.  Relative to our home market in the UK, we estimate the North America market to be approximately nine times bigger, in terms of the number of target AEC firms.  So we're really just getting started on our NA journey!

It did make me smile when Tom explained that he contacted a couple of well placed contacts at Autodesk and Bentley Systems respectively, to ask their opinion of the service. To which both replied, 'KnowledgeSmart-who?!'.

We already have a small base in Clearwater, FL.  Part of our plan to expand our reach in the US and Canada, is to engage with partners, who are already involved in selling training and BIM consultancy services across the territory.

This week, I'm delighted to report that we signed our first US partner, Kelar Pacific, based in California.  We are looking forward to working with Ed, Lia and the rest of the KP team, to spread the word about skills assessments across the sunny West Coast!

When speaking with Tom at ENR, he was amused to hear the British colloquialism, 'Use a sprat to catch a mackerel'. (In this instance, KS being the proverbial 'sprat'!).  What I meant is that the KS system can act as an enabler for training businesses to sell more of their own learning and development or consulting services. Because our data is independent - and we don't offer training ourselves - firms can be confident that the skills gaps highlighted are genuine.  Further, they can benefit from sharing their results data with training professionals, to map out a cohesive plan for improving performance.

We'll keep you updated, as our journey West of the Atlantic continues..

R