Y’know, they always told us hindsight was 20/20. Now that 2020 is behind us, let’s see what happened.
In January and February, nearly everyone we talked to was feeling like this would be the best year ever! Our UK team unveiled a new web-based dashboard, part of Syrinx 365, at the Executive Hire Show.
Meanwhile, in the States, we took a little road trip down to Orlando for the ARA Show. More than 3,000 rental professionals visited us, whether at our pre-show event or at our booth. As our team came back having only lost one of our cell phones at the Universal Studios evening, we felt like it’d be our best year, too.
But later that month, COVID-19 knocked us all for a loop. At our offices worldwide, we went from four locations to hundreds, as our teams began working from home, the phrase that would define the year.
We knew that we were fortunate to be working from home; many of our friends, both in the rental industry and beyond, weren’t able to. Point of Rental reacted by giving. Our development team made our electronic signature product, Rental eSign, into a standalone product so the entire industry could use it, not just our customers. They added the ability to accept payments from eSign to give companies payment processing capabilities. And then we gave it away for free for three months.
All in all, we ended up giving away more than $1.1 million worth of software and service.
The rest of us – Pointers in marketing, in training, in support, in sales, in IT, in admin – helped produce more than 80 free webinars on topics ranging from “working from home” to specific product-based features.
As the year wore on and fears subsided, the webinars faded away and we focused on other things.
For the second year in a row, we added hundreds of software features built from our partners’ suggested in uInnovate. We accelerated the building of our internal training video library, the first step in creating a video training series for anyone using Point of Rental.
More than 1,700 people around the world visited our International Conference website to interact with one another, watch live webinars, and view our software training videos. That exceeded our previous record by more than 800%, creating new possibilities for future conferences.
During the conference, our employee-led giving initiative, Point the Way, became a full-fledged 501(c)3 organization, making it easier for our community to join us as we strive to improve the world.
Throughout the year, our dedication to others resulted in awards and recognition – We made the Inc. 5000 for the fifth time, won awards from RER, InTents, Rental magazine, and even our first MarCom award for marketing communications.
But awards, like year-end recaps, are about what you’ve done; we’re always focusing on what’s ahead. We added RentItOnline (to expand our eCommerce capabilities) and a German office as one of our talented Pointers returned home to Germany from Australia, so we’re excited to see what happens next there.
More than 300 new companies are using Point of Rental as we enter 2021, and bringing even more rental experience into the Point of Rental universe is only going to make our software and service better and more helpful.
All in all, it’s been a heck of a ride. And now that 2020 is in our rearview mirror, let’s focus on the road ahead. We look forward to some fun in 2021 with you.