MONTREAL
This past year was an exciting one for Diversitech. The company saw continued growth on all levels including big gains in both revenue and infrastructure. As of the beginning of 2019, Diversitech has added 19 new employees. Thanks to our capabilities and great team, the company is now doing more engineered and bigger-scale projects than ever before.
Each department has had its share of accomplishments that we would like to celebrate as the year comes to a close.
Operations
On the operations side, 2019 saw big gains in efficiency and productivity. Accomplishing a great deal in just a short amount of time, the department successfully juggled many tasks simultaneously. Over the year, they were able to standardize a lot more of their department to be as helpful as that of any public company or public subsidiary of a company.
While in the past operations has been limited due to outmoded software, the department has made great strides to rectify the problem. The team has developed a few proprietary programs and methodologies that allow them to manage the growth in the department – one of which will be rolled out as soon as January 2020.
From an administrative point of view, the company quickly was able to modify how it has operated in the past to line up with the new demands from Absolent. As Gabe Elberg, CFO & VP of Operations remarked, “The agility of our teams and the learning ability of all the people here at Diversitech has been impressive during this time of adjustment. The ability to be comfortable and accepting of all the changes coming down the pipeline has been commendable on all levels.”
He is also extremely proud of the inventory count the team undertook this past year, “It has been quite cumbersome. We’ve had to do so much in just a short amount of time but everyone here rose to the challenge. The team has continued to improve with each count that we do. I wanted to thank everyone for putting in the work and helping us accomplish the big task at hand.”
To further Diversitech’s commitment to employee safety, operations has also established an onsite safety committee this past year. Training multiple people in First Aid, Diversitech employees can now feel more secure than ever before.
Not forgetting the small things that makes Diversitech such a great place to work, employee appreciation day was another big win for the department, as was the Twelve Days of Christmas. It has been great to see everyone enjoying the bonding around the holidays.
Special thanks goes out to Marko Delgado and Veronica Li for their hard work on the price book which was released this year- a big accomplishment and undertaking that deserves acknowledgement. The company would also like to congratulate and wish Veronica all the best as she starts her maternity leave at the end of this year.
Congratulations also goes out to Lynn Campbell who is receiving a promotion to operations manager for the coming year. She has consistently brought great work to the table and deserves acknowledgement.
As for the future, there are great developments to look forward to in the coming year. As Elberg states, “The new ERP that helps manage the company from an operations and production perspective, promises to make people’s lives a lot easier. I’d also like to see us move towards more data driven decision making. This would allow us to build out accurate data and come up with the right answer based on information we can observe, analyze and draw conclusions from.”
Marketing
For the marketing department, 2019 was an eventful year. It started with the roll out of the new brand guidelines that laid the foundation for projects going forth. The team followed with a rebranding of all product brochures and guides.
With the brand guidelines in place, the marketing team was able to implement a lot of those rules to create new product brochures and owner’s manuals as well as translate both into French. Helping to further promote the Diversitech brand, the content now has a clear visual consistency and is available in two languages.
Another big accomplishment, the team built out a dedicated website strictly for Diversitech’s dealers. This dealer/ distributor portal allows users to log in and view assigned leads, account information as well as make any changes to their account. Providing them greater control to efficiently manage their account, the portal also helps deflect calls that would otherwise go to the call center.
Seeing a need to rebuild Diversitech’s six-year-old website, the marketing team then set out on their biggest undertaking of the year. They created a new, separate website for both the U.S. and Canada, allowing the team to provide better segmentation, and more accurate pricing for customers. The revamping of the site also gave them the opportunity to make it mobile-friendly, meeting the current demands of the 21st century.
Starting first with the U.S. website, the team performed a complete audit of all product specs. Killing two birds with one stone, they were able to update a lot of the information that was no longer accurate. All in all, rolling out the U.S. website was a big win for the marketing team and one that marketing manager, Theo Rigas, is the proudest of, “We completely managed this project, along with the dealer portal, from beginning to end in-house - nothing was outsourced. All front and backend development, branding, imagery, SEO and copywriting was done within our team here. We didn’t hire an agency or 3rd party company to do any of the work for us, with the exception of French translations.”
After the roll out of the U.S. site, the team geared up for Diversi-U, Diversitech’s bi-annual, two-day event that hosts our distributors and dealers and provides them with training and education on our products and services. Diversi-U proved to be a big success for Diversitech and the marketing team. The dealers and distributors had a great time and gave fantastic feedback as a result. According to Rigas, “They showed real enthusiasm to be partnered with an innovative company like ours- one that’s forward thinking and creating tools and experiences unmatched by our competitors. Getting so much positive feedback validated everything we’ve done over the past year.”
Which brings us to the end of 2019 - where the marketing team is putting the final touches on a new Canadian website that is scheduled to go live in January, 2020. As Rigas remarked, “2019 was very eventful for us - a lot of growth, and a lot of critical projects that we feel will provide major benefits for the business and position Diversitech for sustained success. I am extremely proud of my team's efforts. It was certainly challenging at times - we don’t have a large team here so we had to wear multiple hats and multitask. It has truly been a team effort.”
Rigas sees many good things on the horizon for 2020, “With Absolent coming in and incorporating their policies, processes and corporate culture, I expect Diversitech will become an even more efficient, profitable and enjoyable place to work.”
Engineering
For the engineering department, 2019 was a year of growth, innovation and changes. They worked hard to completely redesign Diversitech’s dust collectors and ambient collectors. Using customer feedback as their springboard, they focused on manufacturing higher quality products with improved performance and ease of manufacturing. Two of these latest additions, the Dust Booth Collector and Filterhawk’s Ambient Air Cleaning Tower, were recently featured at the prestigious FABTECH Expo in Chicago this past November.
Another huge development was the formation of Diversitech’s own onsite fabrication shop. As of September of 2019, the company has been constructing dust collectors, ambient collectors and scrubbers in-house. This vertical integration allows Diversitech to control quality, reduce delivery times and cost as well as create new jobs.
Like marketing, the engineering department also found Diversi-U to be one of the highlights of 2019. As Mario Santoianni, head of engineering explained, “At Diversi-U, many customers came up to me to express their gratitude. Some were grateful for simply helping them with product selection, others because we were able to successfully resolve an issue they were having. It’s incredibly rewarding when someone walks up and introduces themselves just to say thank you.”
For 2020, Santoianni would like to see a focus on product improvements and an expansion of in-house fabrication in order to build more custom machines. He also looks forward to working on new products for other Absolent companies, “With the passing of the torch we have gone from a privately owned company to being adopted by a highly respected leader in our field. Absolent brings experience and guidance that will allow Diversitech to grow and become a major player in the industry. We no longer must innovate alone; we can now innovate with help from our sister companies.”