When I joined the Communic8 software development team just a few short weeks ago, I was pleased to learn that the Communic8 platform was also used actively in-house as an integral part of the business’s own intra-office communications. Software solutions that aim to serve the needs of large corporate enterprise don’t always scale down suitably for SMEs and many that do, such as the major ERP platforms, provide separate “lite” versions that strip away functionality. That’s not the case with Communic8, as a solution appropriate for companies of all sizes.

Communication among geographically-remote and time-asynchronous teams used to be challenges that were mostly only relevant to expansive national and multinational operations, but became increasingly common across the spectrum, even before the global pandemic turbocharged working from home. Tools like Zoom, Teams and Slack have slid into workplaces, complementary to but not replacing, email, chat and text. As an end-user of Communic8, my impression of the service has been of a similarly complementary value: not intended to replace other forms of communication, but enhance and support them. It serves as a management tool for important communiques, helping to create more engaging and informative messaging that remains consistent across multiple mediums and provides engagement analytics.

The first message I received as a recipient in the Communic8 platform arrived via both email and text before I was even officially an employee; it was a thoughtfully-designed document, personalized to my role, welcoming me to the team and providing a comprehensive guide to the onboarding process and a checklist of various administrative tasks required of a new recruit. Without having to register on a custom system or perform back and forths with HR, I had a handy single point of reference for everything relevant to my first day and the employer could be confident that I had both received and read the important parts upon arrival. Over the next few weeks, the platform was used as a means of broadcasting several pertinent announcements and invitations to department groups, offering richer design flourishes and more granular customization of each message than would typically be achieved with usual mailing lists, as well as the ability to solicit suggestions and feedback. Some of the communications I received include:

• A notice detailing the office’s upcoming holiday season closures ensures everyone knows the relevant dates.
• Announcements of major software release milestones keeps all staff up to date with the evolution of the product.
• Quick alerts about traffic or weather events in the local area to help coworkers plan their commute.
• Employee recognition updates informing the team of some recent successes and achievements of my colleagues.
• Planning details for an upcoming holiday function, inviting recipients to vote on their preferred activities from an assortment of proposals.

With a range of prefabricated templates, rich communications such as these can be composed and dispatched in the same time it would take to write a regular email, in addition to also reaching users via text message notifications in the mobile app and providing the sender with detailed engagement data.

I have also particularly liked how the mobile application provides an independent list of the messages sent through the Communic8 platform, free from the clutter of the rest of my regular email inbox. I can quickly locate important broadcasts such as office holiday closure information there, without combing through my already cluttered email or chat histories, or trying to recall which section of a VPN-protected company Intranet wiki it is that HR stores those kinds of details.

Both the Communic8 mobile app and user web console provide a single point of reference when I need to check any of the company’s most important or most relevant happenings. They also ensure that I’m notified immediately whenever important announcements are made. For larger enterprises, end users can be categorised into departments or other custom groups, which would be as handy for social clubs and general interorganizational networking as it could be for change management and incident response.

Having observed the Communic8 platform in these onboarding and everyday work contexts over just my first few weeks on the team, has given me a sense of how useful it would be for very large companies managing hundreds or thousands of staff, particularly during disruptive events such as major organizational change, incident response or disaster recovery. If Communic8 can be used to effectively determine staff preferences for a social function with a same-day response time, I expect multinational change management will be a breeze.