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By Bret Boyd | Jan 02, 2023
Welcome to the new year! If 2022 was a chaotic year for the manufacturing supply chain, 2023 holds promise as a transformative one, fueled by our common mission to renew U.S. manufacturing. Below are several updates on our technology and business roadmaps as well as a request for your input to help us drive Sustainment forward. And if you haven't seen it already, don't miss reading our announcement about becoming a Public Benefit Corporation to put SMB manufacturers first.
Sustainment’s B2B market network connects manufacturers and suppliers using a proprietary supplier discovery algorithm to match manufacturing requirements with real-time supplier capabilities. Last year demonstrated that our mission is more timely and relevant than ever, but more, that CompanyWeek readers will be the first to benefit.
Our big product release in 2022 was Sustainment Professional, which is workflow software for commercial purchasing and sourcing managers to more easily find, compare, communicate, and securely share data with American manufacturing suppliers. This product leverages many of the supplier discovery algorithms and software tools that we developed for our DoD customers in 2020 and 2021.
This release is good for our entire manufacturing community. It helps buyers save time and more efficiently find the best manufacturing suppliers for their needs, and it helps suppliers be discovered by more new commercial customers. If you have a purchasing manager at your company who might be interested in taking a look, please direct them to this page or let them know they can send an email to sales@sustainment.tech.
We have a number of big projects and big ideas for 2023.
First and foremost is to expand our buyer-side offerings -- both for commercial and defense customers -- to bring more opportunities onto the platform for our manufacturing suppliers. We realize that we need to earn your time and attention and that the most straightforward way to do that is to help you grow your businesses.
Second is to expand our surface area so that we provide personalized technology for more and more manufacturers. Up to this point we have primarily been focused on industrial manufacturing and the ecosystem of manufacturing companies associated with building machined parts. Our plan in 2023 is to expand into adjacent industries to continue our mission to support as many manufacturers as possible.
Our third priority this year is to explore and implement other enabling technologies and product features that help us solve more business pain points for manufacturers. One area we are actively exploring are financing solutions for small- and medium-sized manufacturers. We believe there could be an opportunity to provide easier access to capital for manufacturing projects, capital equipment, and raw materials.
Please fill out our survey here or send me an email at bboyd@sustainment.tech if you have any ideas or experience around this. I am specifically looking for use cases from manufacturers in our community who think they could grow with easier access to financing on better terms.
Onward!
Brett Boyd is CEO of Sustainment, the online software platform connecting manufacturers and suppliers and powering the CompanyWeek community. Reach him at bret.boyd@sustainment.tech