Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

November 2021

7 steps to conduct a competitive market analysis

The term “competitive market analysis” may sound like something reserved for the C-suite of Fortune 500 companies, but it can be incredibly valuable to any business. Because no matter what industry you’re in, you’ll always deal with competition. To stand out, you must identify what your competitors are doing and compare your current practices against theirs. This is exactly what a competitive market analysis is most often used for.

Combining IT & Comms for Better Employee Experience

In this episode of the Cohesion Podcast, Amanda had a great conversation with Gainsight’s Senior VP and Chief of Staff and Community, Robin Merritt, and CIO Karl Mosgofian about their experiences in converging IT and internal communication to create an employee experience that no one wants to leave. Gainsight is the leader in Customer Success technology and thought leadership on customer-centricity.

Top Live Chat Software: Revolutionising The Customer Service Experience

While they likely have a primary website that the public is familiar with, they often also purchase numerous other similar websites that can help them meet their customer’s various needs. Operating numerous websites like this allows them to gain a larger audience share, but it also adds some logistical challenges as far as customer service is concerned. This is why live chat software is so important to the smooth operation of multiple websites and interface options.

Convene in Teams - Streamline Your Meeting Practices in MS Teams from Start to Finish

Convene in Teams (CiT) was designed to help your organisation streamline your meeting practices from start-to-finish. Integrated with Microsoft Teams, you can now get the best of both worlds with all the functionality of Teams and a Board Portal in one app. With our extensive range of meeting features, including audit trails and auto generated meeting minutes, Convene in Teams makes being compliant easier. You can also rest assured that your documents are protected with the best security on the market. So, what are you waiting for? Try Convene in Teams today!

Workplace communication: what happens when you get it right

Workplace communication isn’t something that companies master by default. In fact, it’s much easier to get it wrong than getting it right. Luckily, organizations realize in more significant numbers than ever that their workplace communication can cause larger issues. These could be built up stress, losses in productivity, and a lack of trust among coworkers.

We've Tried 5 Skype Alternatives and Here's Our Team's Honest Feedback

OK Skype, you’ve been with us for years. No matter how old you are, you’ve probably heard of Skype. For many of us, it was the first app we would open every morning when we got to work. But as you know, no app is used forever. It seems like it’s finally time for Skype to be replaced with something else – something more reliable, robust and easier to use. Or is it?

Top 30 Trello Alternatives for Your Business

So, if you are searching for Trello Alternatives, it must means that you are not fully satisfied with Trello for any reason or are looking for a solution that can accomplish more for you than a basic Trello board. Here in this article, we would review some of the limitations of Trello that might be the reason for your dissatisfaction or even frustration, and we would introduce the top 30 Trello alternatives for your business.

Convene - Streamlined Meetings

Want a more efficient way of organizing and conducting meetings for your board? Convene is the board management software that empowers boardroom members to conduct efficient and streamlined meetings to enable better productivity and governance for the organization. Convene has a set of intuitive features that makes your tasks and responsibilities easier for you.

15 Surprising Employee Productivity Statistics That Will Impress You

Employee productivity, according to WhatIs.com, is “an evaluation of an employee’s or group of employees’ efficiencies.” Employee productivity, in short, assesses how much useful work an employee performs for an organization over a given time. If a company wants to prosper, it needs people that are highly productive. We’ll give you 13 intriguing and useful employee productivity stats that are applicable today.

Amazing Black Friday and Cyber Monday SaaS Deals

I recall seeing on the news people in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries rushing into supermarkets and grabbing electronic products and other items; for a brief moment, I mistook them for vandals robbing the market, but later I was shocked to learn on the news that it was Black Friday, and the announced discounts had caused people to rush for the deals.

IN THE DARK: How To Prepare Your Customer Service For The Next Facebook & WhatsApp Outage

On October 5th, the world went silent for 6 hours. 🤐 The world’s top 3 social media and communications platforms were shut down completely. Suddenly, we couldn’t reach ANYONE! WE WERE CUT OFF FROM THE WORLD. What did this mean for customer support teams? Since the main reasons why customers contact businesses on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are sales and customer service, it is inevitable that organizations across the world lost money during the outage.

Migrating to the Cloud: clearing up the top concerns

Atlassian says that 95% of new customers choose Atlassian Cloud. That’s a pretty convincing statistic – and proves that Cloud isn’t the future: it’s now. But many organisations are still hesitating to migrate to the Cloud. Cost concerns, security implications, downtime and compromised data integrity – there’s so much to worry about. Except, there’s really nothing to worry about at all, if you have the right Cloud migration strategy in place.

10 Best Idea Board Software to Keep Organized

How can one use idea board software properly? It is wrong to believe that great ideas appear out of nowhere. Great ideas are the outcome of an intentional and ongoing effort to generate ideas and make meaningful connections. As a result, creativity is not a magical ability. Rather, it’s a skill that you develop through time by feeding it and enriching it in different situations.

Paperless Accounting and Paperless HR Explored: The Future is Digital

Traditional paper documents and filing systems have been used to organize businesses’ employee and accounting information for decades. But they are quickly being replaced as technology evolves. Business financial accounting has been revolutionized by paperless accounting and paperless HR systems. These systems use cloud-based technologies to simplify and centralize the storage of essential information.

Overcome Limitations of Remote Workplace with Board of Directors Portal

Before your company can fully embrace digital transformation, you must first deal with the various pitfalls of a remote workplace. The lack of face-to-face interactions means there are certain limitations in communication, especially in information dissemination and engagement. In fact, a study by Deloitte shows that 75% of remote workplaces struggle to keep their members connected as they adopt the virtual setup. This applies not only to employees, but to board members as well.

Why a Virtual Office Is a Waste of Money in 2022

An increasing number of businesses now operate almost entirely with a remote team — without the need for an actual office space or desks. However, some of them may require a physical location for mailing services and conference rooms for client meetings. In such cases, most companies go for a virtual office. A virtual office gives your business a physical address and other office-related perks without the cost of office rent and administrative staff.

ITSM Service Desk Software: What Is It, And Why Is It Important?

Unlike when ITSM was considered an IT improvement approach, service management now drives the entire business. Besides, it is among the most critical practices organizations should have to keep up with changing times and foster business success. But for an organization to thrive and build a sturdy structure around its IT services, it needs reliable ITSM service desk software. So, what exactly is ITSM service desk software, and why is it important? Read on to find out.

How to hold a strategic planning meeting: A simple, step-by-step guide for facilitators

If you’re running or facilitating a strategic planning meeting, there are many factors to consider. It’s much more than just bringing everyone together to have an open discussion — and it doesn’t just happen on its own, either. There are several steps you can take to ensure that your strategic planning meeting runs smoothly, but it all starts with preparation. Today, we’ll explore a few ideas to help you hold a successful session, starting with the basics.

Top ways to drive collaboration between support and development teams

Customer support agents are your business’ eyes and ears. They know what your customers need, what they expect, and what they think about your product. Meanwhile, if your organization is in the tech or software industry, developers are its backbone. That means collaboration between these teams is inevitable. But few businesses have clean, clear workflows for this kind of teamwork. Usually, it depends on an ad-hoc system of emails, hidden documentation, and in-person meetings.

5 benefits of optimized business communication

Communication, communication, communication: so much of our lives revolve around it. It’s no different in the business world. Organizations need to effectively communicate with their customers and partners to excel at what they do. But first, business communication within the company needs to be efficient to increase employees’ productivity and engagement. With hybrid work models being implemented across the board, the way we communicate at work has also changed.

6 steps to effective collaboration in the workplace

Effective collaboration in the workplace is something that all employers strive for. Not only is it a great way to make employees feel more connected to their organizations, but it is also a powerful tool to increase the overall quality of end-products and services. However, many organizations still haven’t unlocked the full power of team collaboration. And this is no wonder since effective collaboration calls for thoughtful leadership, good communication, and other important factors.

Managing hypergrowth with distributed front end teams

There’s a lot more to Miro than just our boards. Watch our Enterprise and Platform teams discuss how we navigated hypergrowth (scaling from 80 to 300+ engineers in less than two years) by adapting our frontend stack and engineering practices. You’ll gain insights into how we deal with changes that span multiple teams, the internal tooling we revamped to support our engineering growth, and our path to making our platform more accessible.

How design teams redefined collaboration using Miro

New collaborative tools have sprung up in the last two years — and innovative companies and organizations are choosing Miro. Watch product and design experts from Miro, Shopify, Stack Overflow, Founders Factory Africa discuss how they use Miro to navigate remote and hybrid work environments, and to drive collaboration across distributed teams. The highlights include: Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard platform for modern work, helping collocated, distributed, and remote teams work wherever and whenever.

Company-wide visual collaboration: Why Typeform switched to Miro

For growing SaaS companies, having the right tools in place that allow the business to scale is critical. No one knows this better than Kelvin Ong, Strategy and Organizations Specialist at Typeform. Typeform is a global SaaS company that sets the gold standard in online interactions for forms, quizzes, surveys, and more, and has been growing swiftly to meet rising customer demand. In fact, Typeform doubled its headcount over the last year.

The Developer's Guide to Building Notification Systems: Routing and Preferences

Your CTO handed you a project to revamp or build your product’s notification system recently. You realized the complexity of this project around the same time as you discovered that there’s not a lot of information online on how to do it. Companies like LinkedIn, Uber, and Slack have large teams of over 25 employees working just on notifications, but smaller companies like yours don’t have that luxury. So how can you meet the same level of quality with a team of one?

Conducting An Engaging Condo AGM

A lot of condo unit owners assume that well-built and well-managed condominiums are already good, thus they tend to miss condominium annual general meetings (AGM). This is the norm for the majority of the condo unit owners and shareholders. However, that should not be the case. Like any other annual general meeting, condo AGMs provide necessary information about the year’s activities and business of the council towards the progress of the condominium units.

Build A Modern Product Notification System: For Engineering And Product Teams | Courier.com

Your CTO handed you a project to revamp or build your product’s notification system recently. You realized the complexity of this project around the same time as you discovered that there’s not a lot of information online on how to do it. Companies like LinkedIn, Uber, and Slack have large teams of over 25 employees working just on notifications, but smaller companies like yours don’t have that luxury. So how can you meet the same level of quality with a team of one?

UKG & Simpplr Intranet - Customer Story

In early 2020, Ultimate Software and Kronos merged. After the integration, it became apparent that they needed a way to build unity, reinforce culture, and bring people together within the newly formed organization: UKG. That is when they decided to launch Simpplr. Watch this video to learn the Simpplr and UKG customer story, and hear from leadership about how their new intranet, UKG Today, has transformed employee collaboration and engagement. Learn the reasons they chose Simpplr and why the simplicity and ease of use has been the key driver for getting people to engage with the platform.

Technology's Role in Company Culture

In this episode of the Cohesion Podcast, Amanda sat with Wendy Pfeiffer, the CIO of Nutanix, to discuss the innovation, functions, and excellence of operations in business technology that help improve company culture. What is interesting about Wendy is her beginning. Like many others, they find their passion outside of the field they originally started in. They bring a wide range of experiences and abilities that enrich their new work environment in their journey.

What You Should Know about ITSM Service Desk Software

The processes demonstrated by this software promote maximum business values through the efficiency of IT services. ITSM service desk software also helps accomplish daily activities, especially in the information technology sector of the company. Through the help of this software, the IT team effectively manages all the services in their departments.

Grand Union Housing Group - Convene Success Story

Grand Union Housing is an innovative not-for-profit organization whose mission is to build more homes, stronger communities, better lives. We build affordable homes, provide personal support, and help people to learn, work and be healthy. Aileen Evans, Grand Union Housing's Chief Executive Officer and the new Vice President of the Chartered Institute of Housing shares her experience using Convene and the efficiency of paperless meetings.

How to run a Project Kickoff Meeting

How do ideas turn into actions? We often believe when people have brilliant ideas, it is as if a lightning bolt struck them somehow. This romanticized image of innovation couldn’t be farther from the truth. The reality is that innovative ideas come from collaboration, a key factor to manage any project successfully. Think about how Steve Jobs started Apple, now one of the biggest tech companies globally, with Steve Wozniak as a partner. Or, moving away from tech, how two scientists, Dr.

Slack vs Discord - Gaming, Working or Both? (Our Team's Feedback)

I’m not a gamer. To tell you the truth, the most advanced game I ever played was Mario back in the 90s. However, I’m here today, talking about Discord and comparing it with Slack, the biggest team chat app there is. As luck would have it, some of my coworkers are gamers and heavy Discord users. They helped me out and shared some expert opinions about Discord for this comparison. As for Slack, I’ve become a bit of an expert in it, since I’ve written a number of reviews on this app.

Why Zulip will not get on the blockchain bandwagon

This week, Discord teased plans to integrate a crypto asset wallet. After backlash from their user community, Discord clarified that the feature isn’t ready to ship “for now”. With many popular social and chat apps already on the blockchain bandwagon (including Facebook, Telegram, Signal, Twitter and Reddit), some are wondering whether Zulip might be next. The answer is no.

How To Get A Slack Discovery API Token | Discovery API Docs | Slack

This video takes a developer through OAuth and token creation, in order to start using the Discovery APIs. In this video, we will request the chat:write bot scope, and the discovery:write and discovery:read user scopes. Since the bot scopes need to be installed at the workspace level, and the discovery scopes need to be installed at the organization level, we will need to make two separate requests.

The Developer's Guide to Building Notification Systems: Scalability and Reliability

Your CTO handed you a project to revamp or build your product’s notification system recently. You realized the complexity of this project around the same time as you discovered that there’s not a lot of information online on how to do it. Companies like LinkedIn, Uber, and Slack have large teams of over 25 employees working just on notifications, but smaller companies like yours don’t have that luxury. So how can you meet the same level of quality with a team of one?

Ghostifications: Messages from the Afterlife

Early stage startups can require building complex notification systems into their product to improve communication with users and increase user engagement, which can be a time consuming and expensive process. Courier offers a fast and cost-effective solution for developers to build notifications into their products. This workshop demonstrates how you can use the API to start sending notifications in seconds, across all channels. Learn how you can get started with sending 10,000 messages per month with the Free Tier.

Welcome to Courier

Welcome to Courier. We like put your engineers first, so we have designed a reliable, customizable, and cost-efficient notification system that only takes minutes to integrate into your product. To get started, head over to your Courier app and create your account. The onboarding process will walk you through creating and sending your first notification. You can use the application to build, send, automate, and monitor the status of all of your outbound messages.

Scale your enterprise with confidence: Introducing more security and control to Asana Enterprise

Today’s work-from-anywhere world has turned the IT world upside down. Whether in-office, at home, or on the go, global teams need to be able to seamlessly use their favorite tools from any location—without putting their organization’s data at risk.

3 types of Miro integrations that optimize your hybrid tech stack

While hybrid and remote work have opened up some exciting opportunities for teams, these models also may introduce the potential for silos, security challenges, and communication issues. Optimizing your hybrid tech stack is a huge piece of the puzzle. We all remember the early stages of the remote working era when companies were layering on tool after tool, struggling to find something that worked for our teams.

What is Live Chat Software? The Benefits and Features

Customers are the backbone of your business. It would be best to offer quality customer support to stand out from the crowd and enjoy long-term business success. One of the main challenges that customers face is the quick response to their questions from the team before proceeding with a purchase or making vital decisions. Delayed feedback can lead to disappointments. Fortunately, today, you can simplify your communication with your customers through live chat software.

Build a home for your users with App Home | Tasks App | Slack Platform

Home is where the tabs are! An App Home is a private, one-to-one space shared by the user and the app. The user can reach the App Home from the conversation list within Slack or by clicking on the app's name in messages. Follow along as Slack Developer Advocate Sandra Illi Villarreal shows you how we use the App Home in Tasks App to give users their own place to view tasks.

How To Get Better at Omnichannel Customer Engagement

Brands are going above and beyond to attract and keep their customers engaged. Think about it. A well-timed festive offer by a brand you like brings a smile to your face and lures you to hit ‘Buy’. Remember those points you redeemed for a great price slash? Or the kit of goodies you received from your most loved brand at your doorstep?

How Cloud is future proofing teams

Cloud adoption is higher than ever. 94% of enterprises already use Cloud solutions in some capacity. Covid-19 accelerated adoption to rates nobody could have imagined, but those who’ve adopted it only recently are in no hurry to go back. That’s because the future is unequivocally in the Cloud. It’s not just working remotely in the Cloud anymore. It’s everything.

Splashtop Vs TeamViewer Vs LogMeIn: Compare The Best Remote Management Tools

Remote desktop software enables teams to stay connected and productive while working remotely more effectively through the screen sharing technology. From the pandemic's start through early April, the small desktop software category on TrustRadius showed a 281% spike in traffic. Remote desktop capabilities and free programs like teamviewer are becoming increasingly important, according to software purchasing data from April 2020.

Node.js VM - Isolating our Apps from the Core Engine

As a JavaScript developer, one might know that Node.js is built on top of Chrome’s V8 Engine, giving us a way to run a JS program extremely fast by compiling it to machine code directly. This in a way gives V8 the role of an Operating System, running on top of your OS, similar to how you might imagine a Virtual Machine running.

Modern Governance in the Hybrid Workplace

The new decade has taught people how to cope up with change. Several crises have occurred that forced everyone to adopt new systems, workflows, and processes. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed operations to go remote or hybrid. Additionally, the introduction of advanced tools left entities to adopt technology, even if most users are still in culture shock and are hesitant to use these platforms.

How Envestnet Redefined the Intranet Community Managers Role for Their Company

One person can’t be responsible for accomplishing a company-wide initiative. Whether it is engaging in a more customer-centric motion, following a policy on inclusion, or participating in feedback on a new platform, it must be a top-to-bottom motion. The same holds true for redefining the intranet and the role of the intranet community manager for your company’s internal communications. Most might say this is a job for the communications team or community managers.

7 Best Tools to Create Effective Business Meetings in 2022

The influenza pandemic resulted in significant financial losses for both humans and businesses. All of their business meetings, which had increased their confidence and vision, had been for naught. The echoing pandemic period effectively illustrated how negligence can damage the normal human cycle as a result.

What is Collaborative Work Management? | Scoro

We’ve written a great deal about project management and work management and the benefits they bring. But what exactly is collaborative work management? Why is it different, and how does it benefit knowledge workers and their teams? Let’s find out. As workplace models evolve, so do the terms and practices which companies use. Hybrid working – where employees enjoy a mixture of remote and office working – has soared.

Are you really agile? How to measure your business agility

Are you doing agile – without even knowing it? You probably are if you’re reading this. Most companies today are actually on the agile business roadmap, somewhere. But what’s the destination? If you’ve read our post on setting SMART goals, you’ll know that it takes a goal to make a plan, and that measurement is a huge part of the journey to success. Becoming an agile organisation is no different, and measuring your progress towards your final destination is a key factor.

Announcing 5 new and exciting Miro tools for team connection

October is our favorite month for many reasons — but the main reason is because it’s when we host Distributed, our annual virtual conference. This year, we explored how teams can deeply connect with one another, their work, and their sense of purpose — and got to learn about digital design sprints from Jake Knapp, how Deloitte powers innovation from the inside out, or how to spark team creativity with Columbia University’s Lance Weiler.

Automate Your Services With Information Technology IT Help Desk Software

Your team needs IT in Help Desk Software in handling tickets, resolving issues, and managing assets. The software plays a significant role in satisfying customers and ensuring efficiency in service delivery. It applies automation and customized workflow. It does all you need on its own, and you do not require to sort tickets or search for different assets manually. You’ve got the confidence to attend to other issues as the help desk is running itself.

How to Create a Miro Board in Nifty

Nifty is a flexible Project Management solution that enables integrations and embed functionality to thousands of partners! Miro is the leading white board company on the planet with millions of users across the globe and we are honored to be a partner with them on our productivity journey. In this video one will learn how to create a Miro board and than embed it directly into a Nifty workspace, so users can operate their Miro accounts and boards inside their project management solution!