Case Study: TechSoup

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Overview

Client

TechSoup

Industry

E-commerce, Computer Hardware, Software, Technology Training Services

Project

Business planning, brand development, and bespoke e-commerce with content management

Impact: Supporting over $20 million in sales and 178,000 non-profit organizations worldwide

Soup Group's Contribution

Business Consulting, Marketing and Brand Consulting, Creative Direction and Design, Product Management Management, UX/UI, Software Development, Project Management, Dedicated Hosting Design and Implementation

Goals

Good idea. What about this?

When TechSoup contacted us, the company was only an idea. In fact, they didn’t even have a name yet. The concept was born out of the founders’ company, CompuMentor, which sold technology products and training services to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), non-profits, and students.

TechSoup’s goal was to be an online community for NGOs and students to find support and share information. The community would act as a marketing resource for CompuMentor.

Although this was a good idea, Soup Group felt there was a much larger opportunity. Why not allow NGOs to purchase a wider array of technology products and services at lower prices, and do it globally? 

“We researched, analyzed, designed, and built TechSoup as if we were building it for ourselves.”

– Soup Group

Soup Group's Solution

CompuMentor and their service offering proved to be an important catalyst for Soup Group to define the final concept. We knew that there were additional opportunities to serve NGOs and non-profits more effectively, so our team brainstormed, analyzed the competition, and explored the potential markets to deliver a clear picture of TechSoup’s future.

To make TechSoup a reality, Soup Group developed their business model, new vendor relationships, a community-focused platform, and all of their technology. The model targeted technology sales, customer support, training, and community development for NGOs and non-profits.

We developed software that focused on selling TechSoup’s current and future products, providing support and training services, and managing all related processes. Our solution engaged NGOs and non-profits worldwide to effectively use TechSoup as their primary resource for technology, training services, and community development.

TechSoup Case Study

Business Model

From national
to global

Soup Group focused on moving TechSoup into a model that expanded beyond the regional and national markets CompuMentor was serving. We identified the global market and developed the strategy to successfully launch TechSoup Worldwide.

An important part of TechSoup’s success would be new, worthwhile products for their expanded market. To support this, Soup Group identified additional software, hardware, and service options. TechSoup’s offering grew from a dozen software products to over a hundred, including hardware and third-party services.

E-commerce

Design and develop the technology for a long future

To ensure TechSoup could meet customer expectations and keep up with changing trends, Soup Group designed and developed their e-commerce system to be exactly what they needed and at the same time, flexible. Being easy to manage, modify, and expand, the platform was built to allow for future growth, giving TechSoup every opportunity to create their success.

Once TechSoup launched, onboarding the influx of new customers had to be easy and fluid. To ensure a seamless onboarding process, Soup Group developed a system to rapidly qualify and approve new NGOs, non-profits, and students for purchasing and community membership. Simultaneously, Soup Group was developing the APIs that were necessary to communicate with new vendor systems. 

Due to the many disparate vendor systems that TechSoup interacted with, we designed the process to be fast, easy, and automated. Microsoft, Adobe, Intuit, and most other vendors had strict rules for engaging their ordering systems via APIs. To address this issue, we connected with those vendor APIs and provided a TechSoup API to allow other vendors to seamlessly integrate with TechSoup.

Content Management

Building and nurturing a strong, vital community

In addition to managing content for the e-commerce system, TechSoup could develop and deliver the content that built their community, which was vital to achieving their business goals and success.

To ensure they could create and manage all of their community’s content, we used a customized CMS platform based on our Distributed Content Authoring Framework (D-CAF) methodology that included:

  • Automated content review and approval processes.
  • Content publishing and management.
  • Publishing to multiple locations simultaneously.
  • Community moderating which allowed experts from TechSoup’s vendors to deliver one-on-one support.
  • Translation and design modification for complete localization.
  • Monitoring customer usage and requests so TechSoup could understand the type of training that the community and customers wanted and required.
  • A Chat tool that allowed community members to interact directly.

The overarching goal for TechSoup’s community was to create a supportive environment for like-minded people to interact. They did an incredible job building the community and are now the TechSoup Global Network, supporting more than 178,000 members.

Results and Nuance

Engaging more Organizations with more options

Initially, CompuMentor only served non-profits and NGOs in the USA. Today, TechSoup supplies training and technology products to 178,000 organizations in 236 countries and regions.

NGO Engagement

TechSoup Case Study - Customer Growth

Doing "good" can be profitable

TechSoup has grown into a $30 million-a-year organization. They also facilitate more than $16 billion worth of technology and financial resources donated to non-profits and NGOs globally by their donor partners.

Financial Growth

TechSoup - Revenue and Donations Growth

They made the work matter

The best thing about our work is how TechSoup leveraged it to build an incredible business. Like us, they believe that ideas alone are inconsequential.

Although Soup Group built the business model, brand, and technology, TechSoup did the work and had the tenacity to make their idea one of consequence.

TechSoup made our work matter

Nothing was left to chance

Building their vendor roster wasn’t something we had planned on, or normally do, but our philosophy on how everything affects everything else made it clear that adding more vendors and products was mandatory for a successful launch. 

Not only did we help to gather new and valuable vendors, but we also made sure that TechSoup had efficient technology to facilitate and manage those relationships. With the new vendors and the related solution, TechSoup grew from a few vendors to over a hundred that produced and sold software, hardware, and services.

Nothing was left to chance for TechSoup
"Better" Begins with Dialogue
/ enhance, enrich, rework, help, improve, perfect, refine, upgrade, correct, emend, rectify, fine-tune, revamp /

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info@soupgroupconsulting.com | (415) 843-9925

Soup Group: Create a Dialogue
Soup Group: Create a Dialogue