2020 in review: How did we become stronger

Behind the scenes. The strategies RatedPower implemented to achieve unprecedented growth and key milestones by adapting, restructuring, and prioritizing well-being and psychological safety at work.

It is not even necessary anymore to comment on how the Covid-19 pandemic turned the entire world upside down.

Since we are coming to the end of this special 2020 we’d like to, take the time to analyse in perspective some of the best internal company strategies to overcome the crisis.

Here is the story of how we became stronger

No one had ever imagined that 2020 could be the year in which we would be the main character in a pandemic movie. It has been a complicated year, with huge challenges for all where we had to rebrand ourselves from within. 

Fortunately, the teams, channels, and procedures of our company RatedPower, are practically 100% digital and every single employee can carry out their daily work and tasks remotely without any limitation. However, being able to work from home is not enough, especially in companies where communicating intra and interdepartmental is a must. 

In order to adapt to this new reality, our 3 key approaches have focused on adapting, restructuring the company’s strategies and reinforcing the prioritization of the employees psychological safety and well-being to maintain efficiency and continue incorporating new developments while providing optimal service to our customers.

Adjustment to new reality

Communication Strategy: Each team manager established a daily check in at the beginning of the day, and another one with the founders to foster engagement, empower communication, and ensure alignment between different teams, not only with respect to their own department, but also with the rest of the company.

Additionally, to improve direct communication with managers and teammates, our already existing tools, such as Slack or Notion, were reinforced and encouraged.

Merging processes and updating goals: The organizational structure and processes were deeply studied and streamlined so teams were working in parallel and not overlapping tasks.

Restructuring of priorities

New strategies: With the unavoidable slow down of our sales funnel during the first few weeks of the pandemic, our goals shifted towards improving the business processes and their cycle as well as prioritizing on digital marketing strategies. Additionally, we reinforced our product marketing and started generating high quality content for different stages.

Furthermore, our product and tech teams got their heads down in improving RatedPower with constant development of new strategic features.

Emphasis on receiving feedback and mentoring: As traveling was no longer possible, we took advantage of being able to dedicate quality time to ask for advice and catching up with experts mentors we are lucky to have, thanks to some programs we participated at, like Google for Startups Alumni, Elemental Excelerator or SantanderX.

In this sense, we are proud to have won the first prize of the Santander X Global Award, have been accepted in the Elemental Excelerator Program, become part of the Icex Next, and a pilot development program with Petroleum Development Oman by Phaze Ventures.

Virtual events: Attending virtual meetings was in fact a key tool to learn about potential countries to diversify into and expand our presence.

Although it is in RatedPower’s DNA to be present in all major industry events, this year has actually shown us that different alternatives are also enriching such as virtual trade shows or webinars.

Focusing on well-being

Team building: As a rapidly growing company (our workforce grew +30% in 2020), team building activities such as spending time with team members inside or outside of the office is essential. In this sense, Covid-19 added a bit of complexity to our team building activities but rather than doing less things, it has boosted our creativity.

From tools to anonymously recognise success to teammates, organizing meetings randomly to meet over a coffee, to video meetings with games, cooking lessons, or yoga.

RatedPower Academy: Promoting a learning environment to share expertise is one of our core values. We are proud to say we have some of the best professionals in their areas and for that reason we have fostered a RatedPower Academy with engineering masterclasses and market analyses.

Providing flexibility: We were all conscious that these were extraordinary times and therefore this called for greater flexibility both internally and externally towards our clients and prospects.

In addition to boosting team building activities, one-to-one meetings with direct managers were also established and concerns over professional as well as personal matters were addressed as guidance and support.

In the end, a company is its employees and any company should take time to listen, address the problems and provide solutions, especially under difficult times.

Overall, Covid-19 has hit us all strongly, but we have to be aware of reality, don’t give up and learn to balance disappointment if we can’t reach our goals.

Despite the challenging circumstances, we have been resilient and have made this 2020 a success.  We are very proud of the team and of how they have faced adversity.

A year in review: key milestones

• +150% platform usage in 2020 in comparison with 2019 (in # of simulations).

• +900 users in our platform reaching +2,000GW simulated in over +130 countries worldwide.

• Have helped build +288 projects (over 17.3 GW) and provided energy to +9 million houses worldwide.

• Our team has grown +38%.

• Signed a distribution agreement in China and two agency agreements in Australia and Germany.

• Won the first prize of Santander X Global Awards (150,000USD), selected to participate in the Elemental Excelerator Program, part of ICEX Next and the opportunity to develop a pilot program promoted by Phaze Ventures (100,000 USD).

• Strengthen our international media presence.

• Present in all continents and won clients in key countries such as: Australia, Italy, Holland, Denmark and Serbia.

• Have made our presence x5 stronger in key countries such as the United States.

• Have achieved a new record of new clients in 2020 achieving a growth of 22% in comparison to the previous year and a turnover increase of 103%.