Operating a business of any kind presents its own inherent set of challenges, but compound that with the obstacles involved in running a technology company specifically, and you have leaders left with long and complex to-do lists.
But where there are uncommon challenges, there are unique rewards and when technology companies run into difficulties, they are very well-suited to use — you guessed it — technology in highly nuanced ways to meet their goals. We asked three Chicago tech companies about a major challenge they faced recently and how they relied on technology to help them push through it.
The team at Centro, a software provider for advertising companies, recently faced issues that prevented them from working as efficiently as they could, according to Client Lead Lee Lawrence. These challenges led to a suboptimal experience for both clients and the staff supporting them. Lee shared with us how their team recognized this challenge and overcame the hurdle.
What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a company?
The constant challenge we face within the digital media industry is staying relevant while being able to provide employees with the resources to manage the ever-growing complexity of the space. As more vendors and technologies pop up, our industry becomes increasingly siloed, resulting in companies becoming more isolated within their own walls.
Looking back, Centro had internal vendors within the same walls instead of managing the full client strategy from one team. Those silos led to longer turnaround times for our clients, duplication of efforts, additional reporting, more administration work, more billing, and more employees living in their inboxes instead of doing what makes them excited to come to work every day.
Basis gives us the foundation to reorganize our teams internally so that we become one team and break down silos.”
How have you used technology to overcome those challenges and what impact has it had on the business?
The Basis platform, launched in 2017, empowers our media services team to log into one comprehensive system instead of logging into over five platforms each day. Basis gives us the foundation to reorganize our teams internally so that we become one team and break down silos.
The automation the platform offers allows us to focus our time on developing strategic and innovative solutions for our clients instead of the manual entry from the past, and it has significantly improved the lives of those at Centro because we are able to spend our time on the things that we love doing.
Adam Kanouse, Chief Technology Officer of the data-focused benefits-optimization platform Evive, discussed the pressures employers face in offering their teams the most ideal work incentives. One of the company’s major offerings is a tech solution designed to help alleviate some of that pressure and also thrust Evive into the digital age.
What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a company?
When large employers face challenges related to benefits, it’s a daunting task. They have to figure out how to choose the right vendors for their population, how to integrate them securely, and how to target them to the people in their workforce who need them.
When large employers face challenges related to benefits, it’s a daunting task.”
How have you used technology to overcome those challenges and what impact has it had on the business?
Evive started out with paper communications designed to connect people with relevant benefits at the right times — but as time went on, the company transitioned to digital outreach to meet people where they are. Today, Evive offers a technology-based platform that fuels multiple solutions for different problems, including its flagship product, MyEvive, that uses big data, predictive analytics, and behavioral science to reach people at the right times and inspire action in benefits. Other challenges it addresses include open-enrollment support and finding quality care at an affordable price.
SpotMe is an enterprise-level engagement platform for events, remote meetings and other types of engagement. Talent Acquisition Manager Natalie Telin discusses how the same tech that the company develops to optimize how its clients facilitate their events is also used internally to help SpotMe do just that as it continues to scale.
What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a company?
We scaled from a global team of 60 to 140 and as we continue to scale, fostering a strong culture of collaboration, accountability, excellence and customer centricity is crucial. One of our many goals has been to increase our level of communication to ensure information moves quickly through the organization. To do so, we moved away from quarterly to weekly all-hands meetings and have been providing everyone with weekly progress reports on our key accounts. We also provide updates through the collective breakthrough initiative — a reporting system completed by the event lead that describes a project-related incident in hopes of preventing it from happening again in the future.
There are always improvements to be made, but we believe in the power of these meetings to drive employee investment.”
How have you used technology to overcome those challenges and what impact has it had on the business?
We support our clients in connecting every event to their greater story to help drive company-wide engagement and transformation, so using our own product for the all-hands meetings was a no-brainer. Within the all-hands app we use some of our best-selling key features that allow our teams to access key information, stay connected with one another, send live questions and submit their feedback in order for us to continuously improve future meetings and the organization as a whole.
We are working hard to make all-hands meetings a driver of the SpotMe culture, a reason for every employee to feel confident and proud of working with us. There are always improvements to be made, but we believe in the power of these meetings to drive employee investment — particularly when there is strong two-way dialogue between the executive team and the rest of the company.
