Building the Future: How SDOs and NSBs Can Reclaim Their Power Through Digital Transformation

TLDR
Are you short on time? Just want to get the jist of it? Were you hoping for a TikTok-like explanation in 30 seconds? Here it is (sorry, no video of me dancing):
SDOs must modernize how they distribute standards by embracing digital transformation — but without becoming entirely dependent on resellers. While resellers can expand reach and fill an important role in the ecosystem, SDOs need to maintain control over their content, customer relationships, and future opportunities. By adopting neutral “non-reseller” platforms like XSB’s SWISS, SDOs can create their own digital information products, work with multiple partners on their own terms, and ensure they remain central to the evolving standards ecosystem rather than sidelined by third-party distributors.

Your Host
Andrew Bank is a co-founder of Techstreet, Larky, and i2B Strategies. He helped develop the SWISS digital transformation platform for engineering information, invented by XSB. These are his opinions and they are solely his own. 

Introduction

For decades, Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) and National Standards Bodies (NSBs) and the critical content that they develop have been an important element of engineering, manufacturing, and industrial progress. But the rules of the game have changed. Now that digital transformation is redefining how content is consumed, shared, and monetized, the old model of static PDFs and siloed data is no longer enough. The future belongs to those who can turn standards into dynamic, connected intelligence – embedding engineering insights directly into the tools and workflows that help people and machines make better decisions, faster.

But frankly, if you’re reading this, you probably already know that.

What you may not know is that the path forward is studded with risks from unexpected corners, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. As AI accelerates information accessibility and resellers consolidate market control, SDOs and NSBs must decide whether to maintain product and sales independence and lead the next evolution of engineering intelligence, or give it away to resellers and risk becoming obsolete. 

This article explores the pitfalls of working too closely with resellers, and how SDOs and NSBs can capitalize on new opportunities, reclaim customer relationships, and build sustainable digital business models without relying entirely on their reseller partners.

Note: henceforth, I will use the term “SDOs”, “IP owners”, “content creators” and “publishers” to mean both SDOs and NSBs.

Digital Transformation Offers a Whole New World of Capabilities

A new wave of content-driven technologies is transforming SDOs’ engineering materials from static PDFs into dynamic, actionable intelligence – what XSB calls “digital twin documents” or simply “digital twins.” This shift from “dead-text” PDFs to dynamic, connected engineering data enables faster, smarter decision-making by surfacing the most critical information that engineers need to do their jobs. With the right partners, digital twin data can integrate seamlessly into engineers’ workflow applications like PLM/PDM, MES, ERP, and others, ensuring that critical information is available exactly when and where users need it. By converting content into actionable insights, SDOs can enhance productivity, reduce errors, improve both human and machine decision-making, accelerate automation, and help member companies remain globally competitive.

Beyond improving efficiency, this transformation significantly increases the value of intellectual property. Companies are willing to pay a premium for intelligent, integrated data products that save them time and reduce risk. This not only streamlines workflows but also strengthens customer retention by increasing switching costs and reinforcing long-term relationships. The closer SDOs are to real-world applications, the better they can anticipate customer needs and position themselves as indispensable partners in success.

In an era where AI can generate standards on their own, and open-source groups can develop them in months instead of years, SDOs must innovate to stay competitive and financially secure. Offering high-value products like engineering intelligence and embedded data is no longer optional – it’s essential.

Fortunately, SDOs don’t have to navigate this transition alone. SaaS technology platforms like XSB’s SWISS provide a neutral, state-of-the-art solution for converting unstructured text into digital twin data – without taking a royalty share. This interoperable format also integrates seamlessly with internal corporate content (like Lockheed Martin and John Deere corporate standards), third-party content (like referenced industry standards), and workflow solutions like PTC Windchill, Siemens TeamCenter, and Dassault 3DX, ensuring flexibility and ease of adoption.

By embracing digital transformation, SDOs can future-proof their value, deepen customer relationships, and lead the next era of engineering intelligence.

Industry Disruption Requires Urgent Action

As you can see from the figure below, there are numerous pressures mounting against content creators. These challenges represent both threats and opportunities, depending on how they are viewed and what actions organizations take to defend against or capitalize on those events.

Let’s look at one of the most common methods that SDOs have used in the past: working with resellers.

Giving it All to Resellers?

On the surface, it may seem like a safe and logical choice: let long-time resellers package your content into value-added products, handle sales and distribution, and send you what appears to be a reliable and healthy royalty. Given that standards revenue is essential to many organizations, and SDOs tend to be risk-averse, outsourcing this transformation might feel like the prudent path. But history – and my 30+ years experience in standards publishing and distribution – proves otherwise.

By surrendering control of your content and allowing resellers to extract its true value, you relegate your organization to the sidelines while resellers reap the majority of the rewards.

The real power lies in creating connections, context, and intelligence – not just passively owning content (more on this later). If you hand over this opportunity now, you will spend the coming decades as a secondary or even tertiary player in an industry that should be yours to lead. This is precisely the mistake SDOs made at the dawn of the internet, and those who failed to adapt then are still paying the price. Don’t let history repeat itself.

Let’s Look at History

During my tenure founding and growing Techstreet from 1994 to 2011, I witnessed firsthand how the internet revolutionized engineering content delivery. Instant electronic access and new business models transformed the industry, shifting content from print to PDF and sales from one-time purchases to subscription-based models. But one of the most significant – and costly – consequences of this shift was the migration of customers from SDOs to resellers.

Resellers like Techstreet, IHS (now Accuris), SAI Global, and Document Center didn’t just adapt to this new landscape; they drove the transformation and reaped the overwhelming majority of the benefits. Their biggest advantage? Being a one-stop shop. Customers no longer needed to engage with individual SDOs when they could access everything in one place. Over time, this convenience eroded SDOs’ direct relationships with their own customers.

In 2010, IHS and Techstreet were the most common one-stop sources for standards.

Resellers were also the first to fully embrace the subscription model, which fundamentally reshaped customer behavior. Initially, only the largest companies could afford enterprise subscriptions, but in the early 2000s, Techstreet pioneered tailored subscriptions for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This unlocked a massive new market, accelerating the shift from retail purchases to long-term subscriptions and long-term relationships – most of which were controlled by resellers, not SDOs. As SMEs moved to subscription-based access, resellers gained a grip on customer relationships, effectively “owning” the market while content owners were left behind.

In many cases, SDOs had little to no visibility into what resellers were selling or at what prices. By handing over control of both the subscription and retail markets, they unknowingly locked themselves into stagnant royalty agreements – seeing only flat or marginal single-digit increases year after year. Meanwhile, the overall market expanded at a much faster pace, but the financial windfall went disproportionally to resellers. While SDOs settled for predictable but underwhelming revenue, resellers captured the lion’s share of market growth, built lasting customer loyalty, and cemented their dominance – mostly at the direct expense of SDOs and content creators. Example: from 2019 to 2020 (admittedly a challenging year), the market expanded at a paltry 4%. IHS and Techstreet beat that number handily, while most publishers grew at slower-than-market rates or even contracted. YoY growth rates were similar in previous and ensuing years.

Standards Revenue Growth from 2019 to 2020: 4%

Reseller-Operated Online Stores Compounded the Problem

Techstreet built and operated SDO-branded online stores for numerous SDOs, including AGA, IEEE, ASHRAE, NSF, NEMA, API, and others, while IHS managed several for other publishers. SAI Global managed operations for Standards Australia for nearly ten years. On the surface, this seemed like a win for SDOs – state-of-the-art technology, seamless distribution, and top-tier customer service, all in exchange for a revenue share and reduced operational burden. But these online stores came with unexpected downsides.

Customers who thought they were buying directly from an SDO were actually shopping on an IHS- or Techstreet-controlled domain, giving resellers direct access to customer data and buying habits, and giving them carte blanche to market to this audience. It was not intentionally deceptive and SDOs had a clear view of what was happening, but over time, this siphoned traffic away from SDO websites entirely, as customers began going directly to resellers instead. This shift had long-term consequences: fewer direct customer relationships for SDOs and an increasing share of royalties funneled to resellers. At Techstreet, we even tracked this trend – month after month, the data showed more users skipping SDO websites altogether in favor of buying straight from Techstreet. And because Techstreet paid a lower royalty on sales originating from its own site rather than an SDO-branded store, the financial impact was even more severe.

Starting in 2010, IEEE pointed standards buyers to the “IEEE Standards Store at Techstreet”.

Actual graph of website traffic reversing course from SDO site to Techstreet-operated store.

Meanwhile, IHS took an even more aggressive approach, persuading SDOs into exclusive agreements that locked in even greater control of revenue, content, and customer relationships. While Techstreet never pursued exclusivity, IHS used their deep pockets and a not-insignificant amount of fear mongering to systematically ensure that SDOs became dependent on their infrastructure, further deepening the reseller’s dominance at the expense of the very organizations that created the content.

The Outcome: a Costly Mistake Repeating Itself

Over the past 30 years, the Internet unlocked massive market expansion, new revenue streams, and unprecedented value – but the vast majority of those benefits flowed to resellers, not the SDOs that created the content. By handing over distribution, customer relationships, and control, SDOs became secondary players in their own industry, while resellers built empires on their intellectual property.

Were resellers the wolves in sheep’s clothing deploying a Trojan horse or something akin to a computer virus — or were these results complete coincidence? That’s a debate for another time. But it does seem that without deliberate moves by SDOs, history is now poised to repeat itself. SDOs that rely solely on resellers to drive their digital transformation and sales risk making the same catastrophic mistake – ceding control, forfeiting future revenue, and allowing third parties to dictate the value of their content. The consequences of this misstep won’t just last a few years; they will shape the industry for decades to come.

A computer virus?

Owning Content Isn’t Enough — Connections and Context Drive Success

Many content owners, including SDOs, once believed that simply owning valuable content guaranteed success. “Content is king,” they said. But history has proven otherwise. As Bharat Anand explains in The Content Trap, true success doesn’t come from just having the best content, but from understanding how content connects people, creates value, and fits into a larger ecosystem.

Anand writes, “Success for flourishing companies comes not from making the best content but from recognizing how content enables customers’ connectivity; it comes not from protecting the value of content at all costs but from unearthing related opportunities close by; and it comes not from mimicking competitors’ best practices but from seeing choices as part of a connected whole.” In other words, connections and context – not content alone – are what drive long-term success.

The Content Trap: A Strategist’s
Guide to Digital Change
by Bharat Anand

What Should SDOs Do Now?

If SDOs want to avoid repeating past mistakes, maximize the value of their intellectual property, and fully leverage the connections and context within their content, they must take decisive action:

​1.
Keep the Market Open – Compete, Collaborate, But Don’t Surrender
SDOs must maintain direct relationships with their customers and keep the market open to competition. Trusted resellers can certainly add value, but they should not be granted exclusive rights or given free rein to control the market or an SDO’s content or derivative data. SDOs should retain full rights to develop their own connected products, cultivate their own customer relationships, compete for the same customers as resellers, and work with any third party they choose. Reseller contracts often include onerous language that prohibits content owners from doing the very things that they must be able to do to maximize future revenue. If an SDO does decide to work with reseller(s), they should carefully scrutinize contract language to ensure that they are not relinquishing the rights they need to maintain independence and make future decisions without handcuffs.

Resellers have long been treated as the only viable solution for standards distribution, but this is a myth. They should have the ability to develop their own value-added products – but only under fair, competitive terms that do not undermine SDOs’ ability to build and sell their own solutions.

2.
Stop Building Isolated Silos
Many SDOs are investing in digital platforms to counteract reseller dominance. However, most of these platforms operate as isolated silos, failing to meet customer needs. Customers want a one-stop solution for engineering standards, and resellers provide that convenience with a single license, contract, and login.

No matter how advanced an individual SDO’s platform is, if it only offers that SDO’s content, it is still a silo and will serve just a fraction of customer needs – forcing end-users to go to resellers for the rest. Every dollar spent on siloed platforms strengthens resellers’ grip on customer relationships, ensuring they remain the default source for standards. There is a better way to spend those dollars.

A one-stop source will always trump a silo.

3.
Win Back Customer Relationships with Customer-Centric Solutions
For decades, resellers have pulled end-users away from SDOs, gaining market advantages while diminishing SDOs’ direct influence. Reclaiming these relationships requires a long-term commitment, but the rewards will be lasting. The key lies in prioritizing customer-centric solutions that provide flexibility and value at the point of need.

SDOs must offer digital products that are functional, interoperable, and adaptable to various workflows. Customers should have the freedom to purchase through resellers if they choose, but they should also have the option to license data directly from SDOs or integrate it seamlessly into their PLM systems via third-party platforms like XSB. By delivering choice and convenience, SDOs can reestablish their role at the center of the content ecosystem, strengthening customer relationships and restoring their market influence.

4.
Use SWISS to Build Intelligent Workflow Solutions – Not to Surrender Control
XSB’s SWISS technology offers SDOs the ability to transform their content into digital twin documents, enabling the creation of multiple SaaS and data products that can be sold on the SDO’s own terms, with their own licensing models, at the prices they set, and without giving up a royalty. SWISS can also form the backbone of an interoperable publisher-based exchange (described in #5) that makes content available from multiple SDOs (a one-stop source!) and integrates with related content and critical workflow applications.

Importantly, XSB is not a reseller – it does not sell standards or manage customer relationships in lieu of an SDO. SWISS is an enabling technology platform, much like Oracle, IBM, Shopify, or Twilio, providing the tools SDOs need to innovate on their own terms. Alternatively, SDOs could even build a common platform on IBM or another service; in my experience, this would take 2-4 years and >$10M**. Why spend that kind of time and money to reinvent technology that already exists and is proven and scalable?
**Consider how long it’s taken ISO and IEC to develop a SMART Standards platform that is still, to my knowledge, not yet scalable and not yet ready to serve professional end-users.

By leveraging SWISS, SDOs can develop cutting-edge engineering solutions that strengthen customer relationships rather than handing them over to resellers. The choice is clear: take control of the future or risk being left behind once again.

5.
Build an Interoperable Publisher-Based Exchange
It is entirely possible for publishers to collaborate on a shared platform with a common technology backbone (like SWISS), where each SDO maintains control over its own content, pricing, and business model while also enabling seamless access to other publishers’ standards. SWISS can enable each SDO to develop and offer its own products through its own customer-facing “storefront” and at the same time, offer any other content that is contained on the common platform. The simplest way to view this is: SWISS handles the back-end, SDOs handle their own front-ends (including business models, pricing, licensing, and customer relationships.)

This model is similar to the New York Stock Exchange: consumer-facing firms like Fidelity, Vanguard, and Schwab sell their own bonds and funds through their own branded “storefronts”, but they also offer products from other firms on the exchange. Vanguard can sell Fidelity ETFs, Schwab can sell Vanguard bonds, and any firm can buy and sell public stocks for their customers. All of this is possible because of collaboration between the parties, and a common technical foundation that facilitates transactions and communicates with other platforms as needed.

Imagine an electronics industry SDO telling their customer:

“You can buy our standards as intelligent digital twin data that integrates directly into your PLM and ERP systems, and with the same license, single login, and account manager, you can access related and referenced standards from other organizations – all from us. We’re you’re one-stop source for electronics industry standards!”

By working together, SDOs can become the go-to providers of engineering intelligence in their respective fields while also offering adjacent content from their industry peers.

6.
Don’t Fall for Resellers’ Empty Promises
In late 2018, a group of SDOs and the Department of Defense initiated discussions with IHS and XSB to form a collaboration aimed at streamlining the DoD’s access to military and industry standards as digital twin data. The idea was to use XSB’s SWISS technology to create digital models from multiple publishers, and IHS would manage distribution to the DoD’s agencies, most of which were already using IHS’s subscription services. IHS recognized the potential of SWISS, acknowledging it as a paradigm shift in information delivery, and representing substantial new profits from engineering information. XSB shared extensive details with IHS and other SDOs about how SWISS operated. However, despite ongoing discussions and efforts to formalize a partnership, IHS abruptly walked away from the table. Shortly thereafter, they began pouring resources into developing their own SWISS-like solution, even privately boasting at a SPAB meeting, “we’re going to build our own SWISS.”

For the past five years, and in my opinion, Accuris has been developing that SWISS-like product, now called “Thread,” in an attempt to appropriate SDO content (again), embed itself deeply into customer infrastructures, and establish long-term customer loyalty – but for their own benefit, not for SDOs’. If SDOs don’t act quickly, Accuris’s deep-pocketed marketing machine will position itself as the sole solution in the market, ultimately securing their place as the go-to representative and “savior” for SDOs, locking in their control over majority revenue and customer relationships for decades to come.

Accuris will undoubtedly offer SDOs enticing guarantees: effortless revenue, hands-off content management, and the illusion of stability. They’ll claim that SDOs will be “happy and healthy” while Accuris does all the work. But history has shown what really happens: Accuris will develop products that rely heavily on SDO-produced content, but that primarily benefit Accuris, while SDOs receive only a fraction of the market’s true worth.

In my view, Accuris’s new owner, private equity giant KKR, is in full land-grab mode – securing as much engineering content, as many SDO agreements, and as many enterprise customers as possible. Their goal? To dominate the market, extract maximum profit, and flip the business for a big return within 3-5 years. It’s a shrewd strategy, but a large part of it depends on SDOs feeling powerless, bending the knee, and playing along.

If that happens, SDOs will find themselves at the mercy of yet another owner – one that dictates royalty terms, controls the highest-value products, and owns the customer relationships SDOs should have protected.

Conclusion

There are no simple solutions, but there are certainly avoidable mistakes. I hope this “manifesto” has helped illuminate the potential threats, consequences, and opportunities that lie ahead, guiding SDOs toward the decisions that fulfill their goals.

Change is inevitable and relying on the same strategies that got us here may not result in future success.

As Gerald Kane, a professor of information systems at Boston College aptly stated, “Digital transformation is about how technology changes the conditions under which business is done, in ways that change the expectations of customers, partners, and employees.” Today, digital transformation is reshaping customer expectations, presenting new threats, and offering new opportunities. SDOs must adapt to these new conditions.

SDOs must act thoughtfully, but with courage and urgency, to meet these evolving expectations and navigate the risks and opportunities ahead. The choices made today will define the future of the industry. It’s critical to recognize that owning content is no longer enough. Success will come from making the right connections, creating the right context, and ensuring that SDOs remain in control of their customer relationships, content, and the future of their digital products. Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past. Let’s build a sustainable and prosperous future, where SDOs drive innovation and maintain the value of their content in this new era of digital transformation.