Supernova Award Category
The Problem
Founded three and a half years ago, SEA has experienced dramatic growth over the past year. The problem we faced was, first, to position ourselves for growth, and then to be able to handle it when we achieved it.
As I developed my methodology and built my team, I found myself doing too much micromanaging to get all the work done to the right standard. As we began to attract a lot more business, that became unsustainable.
What we needed was a way of keeping all team members in close communication and aware of what everyone else is doing, regardless of the fact that we are a virtual organization. I’m in Dayton, Ohio, but I have people in Florida, Georgia, Indiana, and California. We have a core team of five, plus others I pull in for specific projects.
In addition to improving communication, I saw the need to make all our processes more disciplined so everything that needs to get done on a daily or weekly basis would get done without fail – and our customers would never fail to be impressed by the quality of our work.
The Solution
About a year ago, we began using RingCentral’s Glip, a team messaging tool with integrated task management and video chat.
Just using Glip wasn’t enough. At first, we weren’t using it efficiently. What made the difference was organizing our project teams and mapping our processes into Glip. We color code types of tasks (blog updates, Facebook, Pinterest) so it is easy to see at a glance what’s happening within any project team. With the calendar view, I can easily show a client everything we have done on their behalf over the course of the month, quarter, year, etc. That never fails to impress!
We also routinely invite customers into Glip teams as guest users so we can collaborate with them directly.
More recently, I discovered Glip’s Zapier integration for automated notifications based on events in other cloud services. Now, whenever I upload a document into our contracts folder on Google Drive, that triggers a notification in Glip that my team can act on.
The results
The business processes we built around Glip became the foundation for our growth.
Truthfully, those processes were born out of necessity. We went through a phase where we didn’t know how to organize the influx of business we were getting and how to stay on top of the all the daily, weekly, and monthly tasks we needed to perform to satisfy our customers. If we hadn’t found an online tool to organize our work, we would have been in trouble. Now, I feel like there is nothing we can’t do.
Having a systematic process for getting the work done allows me to pursue bigger deals, with confidence. I can seal the deal because I know my system is not going to fail me. When I trigger a contract, I know my account executive is going to get an immediate notification and make an immediate phone call (or set up a video conference, whichever works best).
We are doing deals with bigger agencies because they can see we have a foolproof, systemized work flow which gives them the confidence that we can take care of their clients, and that’s growing our business exponentially. Instead of doing one deal here, one deal there, I can get 60 sales in a month. And I know we can handle it.
All the progress we are making is based on the backbone for the structure and systems we have built for our company -- and that is spelled in four letters: G-L-I-P.
Metrics
We’re expecting 267% revenue growth this year.
Last year, we had 75% growth. Any CEO will tell you that systems and processes are the backbone to client retention and healthy expansion. Glip’s framework was the right choice for my virtual team to collaborate efficiently, manage up, and remove the need for micromanagement and pointless meetings. Efficiency is one the biggest factors that relate to our growth, and Glip provides that for us.
The Technology
Glip is web-based team messaging and collaboration software. Google Drive/Google Docs and Zapier are two other important elements of our collaboration framework. Everything we use is in the cloud, and Glip integrates with the tools necessary for us to keep this model efficient.
Disruptive Factor
A lot of what I hear in the industry, at conferences or in podcasts, tells me I should be using Slack, which is the bigger name in team messaging. But I didn’t need the name, I needed the processes and efficiency. I’m not seeing my competitors who use Slack having the same growth I am. Maybe that’s because I’m ambitious and see opportunities or have a different take on opportunities than others. But I also benefitted from stepping out and using the lesser known product that was right for me.
Asking people to change the way they work is another dimension of disruption. One team member in particular was reluctant to take the time to check off tasks in the system, believing the only important thing was that she was in fact getting the work done. She didn’t come around until she saw that everyone else was using the system consistently – and realized she wouldn’t have me nagging her if she documented her work.
More recently, I brought in an intern who is bright but shy, which meant she didn’t like posting comments where everyone could see them. I had to coach her to understand the importance of communication in our virtual world. Asking for clarification or asking for help can be a vulnerable feeling. But we always have things we need support to accomplish or that we need help with. Often, more than one person can help a teammate. With the real time updates in Glip, we can get things fixed more quickly.
Shining Moment
SEA Media was one of the finalists for the Dayton Mercury Award from the regional chapter of the American Advertising Federation. I believe the processes we built around Glip are part of what has helped us get noticed.
We also applied for and won RingCentral’s Teamwork Realized contest for stories from Glip users.