WeAre Solutions is a small but quickly growing company offering digital services. Their values include openness and transparency within the organisation. The values were compromised when knowledge began to compartmentalise during the growth of the company. Piwoot offers them a scaled-down version of Situation room with which transparency is guaranteed among all levels of the organisation.
WeAre Solutions is a domestic growth company offering business digitalisation and cloud environment maintenance and development services. Founded in 2015 the company employs 20 full time staff members and a group of subcontractors.
The WeAre Solutions culture includes transparency of knowledge. However, during growth it was noted that part of the information was not readily available to all. Data and information were divided into several different systems causing challenges to grasp the big picture.
The same phenomenon was discovered both among management and employees.
The management became first conscious of the lack of transparency. Among others the management reports, development of sales, project management and resourcing were difficult to get access to. Thus, forming a big picture demanded manipulating and combining data manually.
The same challenge appeared among employees although from another perspective. The crucial factors affecting their work, like project status on organisation, team and personal levels, available vacation days and unused lunch benefits were not easily accessible anymore.
Lassi Henriksson as WeAre Solutions Chief Technology Officer understood quickly the severity of the problem.
“At the time we still had the situation under control but it was visible that compartmentalisation of information was getting worse while the company was growing. When similar challenges threatened to weaken employee work conditions it was clear that something had to be done.”
”With the help of Piwoot we were able to gather all relevant data into one place and provide the whole organisation a total 360° view on organisation, team and personal levels,” Henriksson explains.
WeAre Solutions is using a scaled-down version of the Situation room concept, where one touchscreen shares Dashboard views for the needs of everyone. The same view can be entered using any kind of a device that has a web browser in it.
Constantly updating Dashboards and information gathering processes working in the background, edits and looks were defined in cooperation with the WeAre Solutions staff.
Now both management and employees can view the big picture and their own status in seconds in order to fulfill their role as efficiently as possible.
“Situation room or in smaller scale Situation view can be shared to whichever device from cell phone to a video projector. Our idea is that everything must be as easy as possible for the end user,” describes Piwoot Oy Ltd sales and marketing manager Teo Kohonen.
The Situation room presents the big picture of the current situation but it also includes the detailed background knowledge which is accessible in the Dashboard views.
“Our previous challenges regarding information transparency and relevant data vanishing into the large data stream disappeared after the Situation room was initialised. Dashboards and reporting both guide and correct actions and therefore the staff can focus into the most important tasks,” Henriksson describes.
Piwoot includes a built-in communication system with which each employee can easily comment on her/his own or company situation and take part in the decision making process. Every person with viewer rights can see the comments and take part in the conversation.
”This has strengthened the open discussion culture within our low-hierarchy organisation. We are not a company where the management would make decisions without listening to the opinions of the employees, but getting these kinds of forums organised was not previously a piece of cake. One of the major benefits Piwoot offers is the ability for each of the employees to easily take part in the conversation in the right context,” Henriksson explains.
Every employee can view their own projects, statuses and forecasts with the help of the Situation view. This feature allows everyone a chance to observe and report possible challenges and misinterpretations for example within project management or resourcing.
”Project management does not always have time or they are not capable of thinking about every aspect. Miscalculations will occur evidently. With the help of Piwoot it is easy to disclose different views and fixing the situations is painless correspondingly,” explains Henriksson and continues:
“Typical examples are for example challenges occurring within resourcing: sometimes the work loads are unevenly distributed between people. To highlight and fix this issue is a very simple task due to Piwoot.
In consulting business a typical example is the variation of workload during the year. With Piwoot we are able to demonstrate when we ought to pressurise sales and when there is a need to recruit more employees.”
The Situation room concept has been welcomed with open arms. The ease of use and the up-to-date information of the Situation room is praised by the employees as well as the company management.
”Savings in time and effort are plentiful,” acknowledges Lassi Henriksson and continues: “We are very pleased and the cooperation has found new forms over time. People are effective at forgetting things, especially when in a hurry.”
”With Piwoot our people can let automation take care of parts of their work and focus on tasks where they are needed most. Data can be examined quickly and one can move along with tasks and head right back to data when there is a need.”