Generative AI-powered tools offer huge potential to create operational efficiencies, boost creativity, streamline processes, and drive revenue. Unsurprisingly, many companies are eager to take advantage of these opportunities, but not all of them are prepared for what this means in practice.&nbsp;
Before you start your generative AI journey, here are a few questions you should ask yourself.
<h3>What are you trying to achieve?&nbsp;</h3>
It might sound obvious, but if you&rsquo;re going to get the most out of an AI tool, start by asking yourself what particular challenge you need to solve. There might be some overarching objectives to increase efficiency or improve decision-making, but the specifics will often depend on the type of business and individual department.&nbsp;
For instance, your finance and accounting team might want instant access to company-wide financial reports or to be able to generate forecasts with real-time data. Sales and marketing might want to quickly gather insights from the pipeline so that they can analyze and optimize them for future campaigns. Or your customer service team may want to synthesize customer feedback across different channels to identify regular and recurring issues and tackle them easily.&nbsp;
Generative AI is enormously powerful, but it&rsquo;s not a silver bullet. However, if you can identify the critical areas of the business where it can make a difference, it&rsquo;s much easier to find the right solutions and implement them effectively.&nbsp;
<h3>Do you have a deployment strategy?&nbsp;</h3>
Whatever solution you choose, it also needs a clearly thought-out deployment strategy if it&rsquo;s going to be widely adopted across the company.&nbsp;
Even if this new generative AI-powered tool offers lots of benefits, it can be harder than you think to change people&rsquo;s habits and workflows. Solutions with simple and intuitive user interfaces can make a big difference, as this reduces the barrier to get started and find value quickly, but it&rsquo;s likely you&rsquo;ll need to be proactive too.
This is where internal communications are critically important. Outline the objective, explain why you&rsquo;ve chosen the tool or solution, and be clear as to how people should use it. This could be in all-company emails, internal newsletters, or all-hands meetings, and it might take a few months for the message to get through. Internal training sessions might also be needed for those who need a bit more help getting up to speed. Another good idea is to identify the team that needs it most and focus there first. They will then become your internal champions and help convince others to make the switch.&nbsp;
Then there are the technical considerations. Does it integrate with your existing tool stack? Which integrations will be most important and will they be functional by the time you launch internally? You might only get one chance to get everyone&rsquo;s buy-in for a new tool, so it&rsquo;s important to give yourself the best chance and make sure everything is working when you roll it out to everyone.&nbsp;
<h3>Can you keep your data safe?</h3>
Very often, the real value of generative AI is unlocked when it has access to enterprise data, but this clearly has very significant implications for data security and privacy. Governments, international organizations, and policymakers are aware of these risks. That&rsquo;s why numerous acts and frameworks, including the <a href="https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ai/nist.ai.100-1.pdf">NIST</a>, <a href="https://www.iso.org/standard/56581.html">ISO</a>, and <a href="https://www.enisa.europa.eu/publications/multilayer-framework-for-good-cybersecurity-practices-for-ai">ENISA</a>, exist to keep data safe and secure. But these are not the only things to look out for.
Lots of generative AI solutions that use information retrieval rely on something known as a data-index. Primarily created using vector databases, they serve as a semantic bridge, connecting a user&rsquo;s keyword or query to the information they&rsquo;re searching for. The major downside to this approach is that it requires all your enterprise data to be duplicated and stored in vector form. This creates a single point of failure, and if this data-index is breached, all of your enterprise data could be exposed (as vectorized information can be easily reversed). This is where the benefits of generative AI should be carefully weighed up against the risks.&nbsp;
But there are alternatives. For example, Qatalog uses live API retrieval, which means all of your enterprise data stays safe where it is, and the results are always from real-time information, rather than the latest update to the index.&nbsp;
<h3>Should you build or buy?&nbsp;</h3>
Up until now, we&rsquo;ve generally assumed that you&rsquo;re looking at buying a generative AI solution. But some companies have taken the plunge and built their own, purely for their own employees to use.&nbsp;
Typically these are very large companies with deep technical expertise in generative AI, lots of software engineering resources, lots of computational power available, and large financial resources. Take McKinsey, which boasts 45,000 employees and more than $15 billion in revenue. It has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/about-us/new-at-mckinsey-blog/meet-lilli-our-generative-ai-tool">created a generative AI platform known as Lilli</a> for internal use. McKinsey said Lilli enables the &ldquo;synthesis of the firm&rsquo;s vast stores of knowledge to bring our best insights, quickly and efficiently, to clients.&rdquo; Stripe also appears to have done something similar by creating its own internal LLM. <a href="https://x.com/patrickc/status/1681699442817368064?s=20">According to the founder and CEO, Patrick Collinson</a>, one-third of its employees were using it every week earlier this year.&nbsp;
Of course, the advantage of this approach is that you can build a solution that fits your exact needs. But there are major risks too, even if you have the resources to make it happen. Firstly, there&rsquo;s no guarantee you&rsquo;ll be able to reach parity with external platforms. Second, even if you can, it will likely require significant and ongoing investment to maintain and improve it, in order to keep pace with the market. Finally, it&rsquo;s possible (and arguably likely) that a brand new technology comes along that completely supersedes what you&rsquo;ve built.&nbsp;
That&rsquo;s why, for most companies, buying a generative AI solution from a third party will be a better option.&nbsp;
<h3>A decision or a necessity?</h3>
In summary, the journey towards integrating generative AI into your organization a clear understanding of your goals and a strategy for successful deployment.&nbsp;There are rich rewards if you get it right, however, it is not without its challenges. It necessitates not only a technological shift but also a cultural one, with commitment to training, a willingness to adapt to new processes, and a vigilant approach to data security.&nbsp;
Ultimately, however, many businesses will be aware that generative AI will create significant competitive advantages for the first movers. In this new world, the decision may look like less of a choice and more of a necessity.&nbsp;
Qatalog leverages generative AI to enable seamless access to company knowledge, more informed decision-making, and significant operational efficiencies. <a href="https://qatalog.com/demo/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=blog&amp;utm_content=ready-for-ai" rel="follow">Book a demo to learn more</a>.&nbsp;

Before you commit to generative AI, here are a few questions to decide if your business is ready.

Is your business ready for generative AI?

Enterprise search technology is under the spotlight again as rapid advances in AI and natural language processing (NLP) have made it easier than ever to find information anywhere across businesses. But progress hasn&rsquo;t always been this fast.
Early search technologies were fairly rudimentary. In the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B978159749296600002X">1970s and &rsquo;80s</a>, they were largely used in research and case management databases and were powered by mainframes and minicomputers that weren&rsquo;t publicly available.&nbsp;
It was only in 1993 that search technologies were advanced enough to create the world&rsquo;s first search engine. And it probably goes without saying that things have changed significantly in the decades since.
Traditional search tools are fast being replaced by new technologies, giving companies better options for accessing and retrieving data. Here, we outline some of the most common. While points of overlap exist between these techniques, with many used in combination with one another, there are still some crucial factors that set them apart.&nbsp;
<h3>1. Boolean search</h3>
Emerging from the foundations of Boolean logic in the mid-19th century, Boolean search has been a pivotal tool in computer-based information retrieval since the mid-20th century. This search technique operates on logical operators &mdash; AND, OR, NOT &mdash; to formulate queries that filter and refine search results with precision.
At its core, Boolean search is about establishing clear search criteria. For instance, the use of &ldquo;AND&rdquo; between keywords narrows down the search, ensuring results include both terms: &ldquo;cats AND dogs.&rdquo; Conversely, using &ldquo;OR&rdquo; broadens the search: &ldquo;cats OR dogs&rdquo; fetches results containing either term. The &ldquo;NOT&rdquo; operator excludes specific keywords: &ldquo;cats NOT dogs.&rdquo; Combining these with parentheses allows for more intricate and nuanced searches, such as &ldquo;(cats OR dogs) AND birds.&rdquo;
Best use:&nbsp;Database queries, including academic research databases, job search platforms, and legal document repositories, use Boolean search well.
Pros:
<ul>
<li>
Precision: The combination of keywords and logical operators means you can create very precise queries.
</li>
<li>
Customization: You have full control over your search queries and can easily filter out irrelevant information in large databases.
</li>
<li>
Complexity: Boolean search can handle complex, advanced, and specialized queries.
</li>
</ul>
Cons:
<ul>
<li>
Limited nuance: Boolean search isn&rsquo;t sensitive to the nuances of natural language, which can become problematic if your keywords have close synonyms or variations.
</li>
<li>
Time-consuming: If your Boolean queries become complex, they can be quite time-consuming to put together. You might have to experiment a fair bit.
</li>
<li>
Not intuitive: Users who aren&rsquo;t familiar with Boolean logic might find the process frustrating and inefficient at first.
</li>
</ul>
<h3>2. Keyword search</h3>
Rooted in the dawn of internet search engines in the 1990s, Keyword search is the cornerstone of digital information retrieval. This technique relies on specific words or phrases, termed &ldquo;keywords,&rdquo; to scour documents or records containing those particular terms. Before diving into the content, it undergoes an indexing process, laying the groundwork for swift and efficient search outcomes.
In essence, once keywords are punched into a search interface, underlying algorithms leap into action, combing through the indexed content. The end result is a ranked list of matches, often ordered by relevance, to guide the user to the most pertinent information.
Best use:&nbsp;Owing to its versatility, keyword search is omnipresent &mdash; from search engines and document management systems to complex databases.
Pros:
<ul>
<li>
Simplicity: Keyword search is easy to understand and use, making it widely accessible.
</li>
<li>
Versatility: Keyword search can be applied to various types of content, including text documents, websites, and databases.
</li>
<li>
Flexibility: You have control over the keywords you use, which makes it easy to customize your searches according to your specific needs.
</li>
</ul>
Cons:
<ul>
<li>
Relevance: The results you receive may not always be relevant to what you&rsquo;re after &mdash;&nbsp;keyword searches don&rsquo;t consider context or semantics.
</li>
<li>
Overload: A broad keyword can generate too many results, leading to information overload.
</li>
<li>
Missed information: If a document or record doesn&rsquo;t contain the exact keywords used in the search query, it may not appear in the results. But it might still be relevant.
</li>
</ul>
<h3>3. Vector search</h3>
Vector search is used to find items in a large dataset that are similar to a specific query. It&rsquo;s also called vector space search or similarity search. It started gaining momentum in the early 2010s when deep learning and neural network-based approaches rose to prominence.
Vector search works by representing every item in a dataset (such as a word, a number, or an image) as a high-dimensional vector. This is a numerical representation of the item and contains a large number of dimensions. These vectors sit in a large database of vectorized information, often known as a data index.
When you enter a query, this is also represented as a vector, and the system calculates the similarities between the query vector and the vectors in the dataset. The items with the highest similarity scores are ranked and offered as search results.
Best use:&nbsp;Vector search is best used in recommendation systems. Here, it helps to suggest personalized products, content, or items by identifying similarities between user profiles and available items.
Pros:
<ul>
<li>
Versatility: Vector search works for a range of data-types by converting text, images, or numerical data into vector representations.&nbsp;
</li>
<li>
Speed: This type of search can generate complex queries relatively quickly.
</li>
<li>
Caters to multiple modes: It allows you to search for items that are similar in multiple aspects, such as finding images that match a text description.
</li>
</ul>
Cons:
<ul>
<li>
Poor precision: When data dimensions grow, vector database&rsquo;s high-dimensional spaces expand rapidly. This causes data points to seem closer together, making it hard to identify close matches in large datasets.
</li>
<li>
Data quality: Vector search depends heavily on the quality of the vector representations. Results are likely to be poor if vectors don&rsquo;t capture the data&rsquo;s features accurately.
</li>
<li>
Data security: Vector search requires all of a company&rsquo;s data to be stored in a separate vector database, which has to be continuously updated. This significantly increases the risks attached to data-breach, as research shows that vectors can be easily reversed to reveal the original data.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</li>
</ul>
<h3>4. Semantic search</h3>
Semantic search uses NLP to improve the accuracy and relevance of search results and gained prominence in the late 2000s and early 2010s. It was an improvement on existing technologies because it understood the intent and the contextual meaning of searches beyond the specific keywords used. This significantly improved the quality and accuracy of the results.
Today, semantic search covers a range of technologies and approaches. Some rely on intricate concept mapping, identifying relationships between diverse entities. Others lean into contextual analysis, assessing the backdrop against which a query is set. And, as mentioned above, vector search can also be used to enable semantic search.&nbsp;
Best use:&nbsp;Semantic search is often used in web search engines, e-commerce platforms, and intelligent virtual assistants.&nbsp;
Pros:
<ul>
<li>
Improved relevance: By prioritizing intent over exact phrasing, results align more closely with what the user meant, rather than just what they said.
</li>
<li>
Dynamic understanding: As language evolves and new terminologies emerge, it can adapt, ensuring it stays current and relevant.
</li>
<li>
Interconnected insights: By understanding relationships and context, it often surfaces related topics or suggestions that the user might find valuable, even if they weren&rsquo;t explicitly searched for.
</li>
</ul>
Cons:
<ul>
<li>
Lack of precision: By attempting to understand context and relationships, semantic search can sometimes provide a breadth of information. For users seeking a narrow, specific answer, this can feel overwhelming and off-target.
</li>
<li>
Data quality: Semantic search relies heavily on the quality of the data and may need to be combined with other search technologies to ensure it has access to the right information.
</li>
</ul>
<h3>5. Federated search</h3>
Federated search enables information retrieval across multiple and often disparate sources simultaneously, typically via API. Originating in the early 2000s, it acts as a unified gateway, negating the need to access each source individually.
This technology is especially beneficial in environments where information is distributed across a large number of tools or applications. Federated search bridges these systems, providing a consolidated view and ensuring users don&rsquo;t miss out on vital data due to it being siloed.
Best use:&nbsp;Federated search is ideal for organizations with fragmented information sources to reduce data silos. It works well in combination with other search technologies (such as RAG) as an alternative to vector databases.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Pros:
<ul>
<li>
Comprehensive: Through a single query, federated search allows you to access a wide range of information sources.
</li>
<li>
Quick and efficient: With federated search, you don&rsquo;t have to manually search through multiple sources individually. This saves time and effort.
</li>
<li>
Easy to integrate: Federated search can be integrated into various applications and platforms.&nbsp;
</li>
</ul>
Cons:
<ul>
<li>
Performance: Querying multiple sources at once can put a strain on system performance.
</li>
<li>
Data source compatibility: Data sources may use different search technologies, formats, and APIs, making integration and query processing complex.
</li>
<li>
Security and access control: Federated search systems must handle security and access control for each source to ensure that users only see results they are authorized to access.
</li>
</ul>
<h3>6. Retrieval-augmented generation&nbsp;</h3>
Retrieval-augmented generation, often abbreviated as RAG, is a more recent approach that combines the best of both retrieval-based and generative models, especially in the context of language models.&nbsp;
This technique gained traction in the early 2020s, driven by advancements in AI and natural language processing. It operates by using a retrieval mechanism to extract relevant snippets or passages from a large corpus of information. Once this relevant information is fetched, a separate generative component constructs a coherent and detailed response using the retrieved data. For example, in question-answering tasks, RAG would first retrieve pertinent documents or passages that contain the answer, and then generate a well-formed answer based on this information.
A notable strength of RAG is its ability to reduce &ldquo;hallucination&rdquo; in large language models. By incorporating a retrieval mechanism, RAG ensures that the generative responses are grounded in real and verifiable data from trusted sources, thus reducing the chances of producing erroneous or fictitious content.
Best use:&nbsp;Retrieval-augmented generation is particularly effective in scenarios where context-rich and detailed responses are needed, such as advanced question-answering systems, chatbots, or when creating synthesizing content based on large amounts of reference material.
Pros:
<ul>
<li>
Contextual relevance: RAG generates text that is contextually relevant and informative, which improves the quality of responses.
</li>
<li>
Fact-based responses: Because factual information is extracted and incorporated from external sources, the content that is generated is typically factually accurate.
</li>
<li>
Adaptability: RAG models are adaptable and can be fine-tuned for specific domains or applications. This makes this suitable for a wide range of use cases.
</li>
</ul>
Cons:
<ul>
<li>
Complexity: Implementing RAG systems can be complicated. Specialist infrastructure and expertise in both retrieval and generation techniques is required.
</li>
<li>
Latency: The retrieval process can introduce latency issues as it searches for relevant information.
</li>
<li>
Quality: The effectiveness of the system depends on the quality of the retrieval process, and if the retrieval process doesn&rsquo;t find relevant information, the generation component might not produce the right responses.
</li>
</ul>
<h3>How to decide&nbsp;</h3>
There are lots of search providers out there, and each uses a different combination of technologies. To decide which works best in your organization, consider some of the following:
<ul>
<li>
Objective: Modern search technologies can be applied to a range of problems, and many providers have features that extend beyond just search. Think about the critical problem you are trying to solve and make sure the solution is aligned with that goal.&nbsp;
</li>
<li>
Data types: Large enterprises will need to search within diverse data types from different sources and applications. That&rsquo;s why it&rsquo;s important to ensure the technology solution works with the critical data-types and has the necessary integrations.
</li>
<li>
Budget and timeline for roll-out: Cost is always going to be a factor, but it&rsquo;s also worth ensuring the implementation requirements and how long it will take to roll out for large datasets.&nbsp;
</li>
<li>
Data security: Different search technologies necessitate different approaches to data management. For example, many AI-powered search solutions use data-indexes to retrieve information. This approach <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/why-data-indexing-is-a-problem-for-ai-powered-search/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">has some significant downsides </a>when it comes to data security.
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Why choose Qatalog</h3>
Qatalog&rsquo;s Enterprise Intelligence platform helps you find knowledge and insights from anywhere across the business in a few seconds. It's powered by our ActionQuery AI engine, which uses a combination of federated search and RAG.&nbsp;
This approach means Qatalog delivers the scalability and data-security of federated search and the accuracy and context awareness of RAG search. It allows for real-time responses across tools and systems, and there&rsquo;s no need for data-indexing, which means your data stays safe and secure.&nbsp;
<h4>For more information,&nbsp;<a href="https://qatalog.com/resources/action-query/">download our new ActionQuery whitepaper</a> or <a href="https://qatalog.com/demo/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=blog&amp;utm_content=search-technology" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">book a demo</a> to see it in action.</h4>

Generative AI has increased the interest in enterprise search. We assess the different search technologies.

Six search technologies explained

Generative AI has increased the interest in enterprise search. We assess the different technologies.

Generative AI and large language models (LLMs) are going to transform the way that businesses operate forever. This is a paradigm shift that will permanently alter the way we access, manage, and share knowledge.&nbsp;
Anyone can now request information from anywhere across the business and have a precise response almost instantly. This avoids endless hours spent searching through tools and apps. But it also opens up many new possibilities to drive revenue growth, with better decision making, greater output, and an optimized customer experience, to name just a few.&nbsp;
However, there are different approaches to using LLMs and generative AI and some come with significant risks attached.&nbsp;Here we outline the four major risks to consider and how best to mitigate them.
<h3>1. Erosion of trust&nbsp;</h3>
One of the structural features of LLMs is a phenomenon known as "hallucination". This is where the model produces outputs that, while appearing plausible, are factually incorrect. It occurs because LLMs generate responses based on similar patterns observed in their training data. This means that even if the LLM cannot resolve a particular query, it will just make something up that sounds similar instead.
Given the known risk of hallucination, it&rsquo;s inevitable that trust in the system gradually erodes. And if users find themselves constantly second-guessing the outputs, the efficiency gains that the technology promises could be largely wiped out.&nbsp;
The Solution: To mitigate this, it&rsquo;s critical that responses that are rooted in real-time business data, not the LLM layer. Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) is often a good way to do this and uses a two part method to retrieve information. In the first step, an external database or source of information is accessed and the relevant information is found. Then, using that information, it crafts a coherent and precise answer to the question.
<h3>2. Inaccurate results&nbsp;</h3>
The vast majority of AI powered knowledge retrieval tools use vector databases to create an index of all enterprise data. This approach is often used because it&rsquo;s seen to be more efficient and it allows for semantic search, meaning exact keyword matches are not required. Data-indexes like this work by storing information in vector form in high-dimensional space and use 'nearest-neighbor' algorithms to pinpoint relevant data.&nbsp;
However, this approach quickly runs into problems for larger data-sets. As data dimensions multiply, the space undergoes rapid expansion. This results in many data points appearing much closer together in relative terms, which makes it increasingly difficult to discern genuine close matches. The result is a significant deterioration in both accuracy and precision in enterprise-scale indexes, with an increasing prevalence of false positives. This means that the answer can be generated using internal business data (unlike the hallucination problem), but might still be wrong. For example, information might be sourced from a similar looking, but ultimately incorrect document. If this isn&rsquo;t recognised, this mistake could trigger other regulatory issues if inaccurate information is being stored and shared.&nbsp;&nbsp;
The Solution: Look for alternative knowledge retrieval methods that don&rsquo;t require data-indexing. While it works well on a smaller scale, the precision is poor in very large data-sets. Federated search via API can be a good alternative, when combined with other methods, such as RAG.
<h3>3. Weak data security&nbsp;</h3>
Precision is not the only problem with data-indexing. Data security is also a major risk, as it requires the duplication of all enterprise data to create the index on the provider&rsquo;s server, with almost constant data transfer to keep it up to date. Naturally, this significantly increases the data leakage risk, and significantly increases the surface area for potential cyber attacks
The Solution: Again, the solution here is to avoid solutions that require data-indexing in order to minimize additional data transfer and duplication. It&rsquo;s inevitable that some data has to pass through the system you&rsquo;re using, but it should be transient wherever possible, meaning that it&rsquo;s discarded immediately after use.
<h3>4. Sensitive information</h3>
Enterprise companies have vast repositories of data in all sorts of different tools. Connecting this data to a powerful AI model means it can be made easily accessible to everyone and used to generate valuable strategic insights. However, this also poses risks, as employees could use the AI to reveal sensitive information, intentionally or not. For example, it could be used to generate a comparative performance assessment across a workforce, or to analyze the sentiment of communication between certain individuals, potentially revealing bias. Clearly, information like this could have have serious consequences for company culture and safety.
The Solution: Guardrails need to be in place which block certain query types. These can be set by the provider, which will likely have some defaults. Further controls can then be determined by the customer admin, who will have a better understanding of the company&rsquo;s data and any specific areas of risk. Token-level access is also important, ensuring that each user only be shown information they already have access to. This should be standard for any system using AI powered knowledge retrieval.
<h4>Qatalog is purpose built for safe and secure AI deployment. There&rsquo;s no data-indexing required and it&rsquo;s highly hallucination resistant. <a href="https://qatalog.com/demo/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=blog&amp;utm_content=navigate-ai-risks" rel="follow">Book a demo to learn more</a>.&nbsp;</h4>

Businesses deploying AI need to be aware of the risks, including data-security and regulatory compliance. Here's how to navigate them.

How to navigate the risks of enterprise AI deployment

Workplace tools are designed to help you save time, be more productive, and communicate more easily.&nbsp;
But these tools sometimes do more than you bargain for. With every task management tool or collaboration app you use, your organization is nudged into a particular way of working. And it&rsquo;s not always for the better.&nbsp;
You can get straitjacketed into particular processes, find yourself using different terms, or be forced to use methods and systems you never intended to adopt.&nbsp;
Why does this matter? Because your company culture, which you spent so long building and makes your company unique, risks being eroded.
In this post, we look at how the tools you use affect your culture, why that should be a concern, and what you can do to fix it.&nbsp;
<h3>Four ways tools impact your company culture, often without you noticing</h3>
Your company culture is what sets you apart as a business. It&rsquo;s the way you organize and create things, how your people interact with each other, and how they think about the work they do. And it&rsquo;s also how your organization presents itself to the world.&nbsp;
Your company culture defines your unique identity and helps you attract and retain the best people.&nbsp;
Many employees, for example, have come to expect a flexible and asynchronous working culture.&nbsp;<a href="https://language.work/research/killing-time-at-work/">Some say</a> they would even consider moving to a new job &mdash; and take a pay cut to move elsewhere &mdash; if they were prevented from working flexibly.&nbsp;
Others are interested in growth opportunities, how companies handle mentorship, or a business&rsquo; approach to transparency and open communication.&nbsp;
If these issues are important to you, making them a visible and meaningful part of how you work will help to incorporate them into your company culture.
What may come as a surprise is that the tools you use can influence your company culture, too. Because they determine the processes that guide the way you work, they have a lot of power to shape your business.&nbsp;
Here are four key ways they can impact, and even transform, your culture.
<h3>1. Your tools impose ways of communicating</h3>
Whether you advise against after-hours emails or encourage time for deep work, the way you communicate is likely a key pillar of your culture.&nbsp;
And rightly so.&nbsp;<a href="https://language.work/research/killing-time-at-work/">In our research</a>, we found that company communications have a profound impact on employee productivity and well-being.&nbsp;
Yet no matter how good your intentions, if the tools you use aren&rsquo;t aligned with your vision, you&rsquo;ll struggle to put your communication culture into action.&nbsp;
Take Slack or other instant messenger apps, for example. Studies show that the average employee receives as many as&nbsp;<a href="http://timeisltd.com/post/cut-yourself-some-slack-less-is-more-with-workplace-messaging#:~:text=data%20reveals%20that%20throughout%202021,every%20day%2C%20by%20every%20person.">125 Slack messages a day</a>, in an endless stream of notifications. This makes it hard to create a culture that prioritizes deep work. If time for dedicated, creative work is important to you, be prepared to fight against the expectation that replies have to be instant. Tell your employees that they can silence notifications if they wish.&nbsp;
Messaging apps pose a wider challenge for organizations committed to asynchronous work.&nbsp;<a href="https://language.work/research/killing-time-at-work/">Our research</a> found that 73% of employees reply to notifications they receive after hours. And they&rsquo;re spending an average of 67 minutes extra each day online &mdash; just to show they&rsquo;re busy.&nbsp;
All this means that, if you want to build a different way of communicating, be selective about the tools you choose.
<h3>2. Tools inevitably emphasize certain values</h3>
Alongside your communication style, the values your business holds are at the heart of your culture. But they&rsquo;re vulnerable to the software you use, too.
Say you pride yourself on your commitment to openness and transparency. Is your collaboration tool&nbsp;actually allowing you to cultivate this in your workplace?&nbsp;
While they can be great for managing workflows, many project management tools limit visibility over tasks or projects to people who are specifically assigned to them. Private Slack channels also limit the visibility of valuable discussions for those who don&rsquo;t have access. The result is that transparency gets blocked and ideas and projects remain siloed within particular functions.&nbsp;
This has knock-on effects on your wider creativity and idea-sharing. For example,&nbsp;<a href="https://language.work/research/workgeist/">62% of employees</a> report missing opportunities for collaboration because their tools don&rsquo;t offer the visibility they would like.
All these siloed resources, projects, and&nbsp;<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/when-is-the-right-time-to-create-a-knowledge-base/">knowledge</a> are a handbrake on your teams&rsquo; ability to get work done. Employees are wasting time digging up the information they need, when they could be spending it on productive, rewarding work.&nbsp;
Organizations that want a culture of agility and transparency often have their workplace tools working against them. And that&rsquo;s not why they adopted them in the first place.
<h3>3. They force you to adopt different processes and terminology</h3>
Most software, apps, or platforms you adopt will have been built outside your organization and not necessarily for your organization.&nbsp;
That means that, inevitably, you&rsquo;ll have to adapt to their set of processes, language, and systems.
In some ways, this appears harmless. These days, we take the vocabulary of threads, channels, folders, and boards for granted, all of which have come from our range of tools.&nbsp;
But the sheer variety of contrasting labels and terms can be alienating and confusing for employees if it contrasts with your own company language. Particularly when companies are using&nbsp;<a href="https://productiv.com/resources/the-state-of-saas-sprawl/">as many as 250 different tools</a>.
More insidiously, though, these established&nbsp;<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/create-processes-that-foster-creativity/">processes can clash with the creative ways</a> in which you might organize your resources or ideas.
If you&rsquo;re using tools like Trello for project management, for example, your teams are forced into a linear stream of comments &mdash; without much space for brainstorming, lateral thinking, or cross-functional collaboration.
Is that what you want your company culture to stand for?
Or perhaps you have your own words to describe positive feedback or particular types of projects. If you&rsquo;re using a tool that uses different terminology, it will be an uphill battle to ensure it&rsquo;s widely adopted.&nbsp;
<h3>4. There&rsquo;s little space for customization</h3>
This brings us to the question of customization.&nbsp;
While many tools say they&rsquo;re flexible and responsive to your needs, that flexibility is often pretty cosmetic. Typically, it&rsquo;ll be limited to customizable visualizations or designs, rather than the fundamental processes that guide your work.&nbsp;
As a result, the risk is that what makes you unique gets lost. Simply, when you&rsquo;re using the same standard messaging apps, project management software, and collaboration tools as everyone else, you end up speaking, working, and managing your tasks like them, too.&nbsp;
Of course, for some businesses that might not be a huge problem. But if you&rsquo;re doing groundbreaking work to disrupt your industry, the standard way of doing things likely won&rsquo;t be good enough.
<h3>Don&rsquo;t sacrifice your company culture for the sake of your tools</h3>
The software you use can undermine your communications, hamper collaboration, and erode your company&rsquo;s uniqueness. But it doesn&rsquo;t have to be this way.
Instead, choose software that&rsquo;s designed to suit the culture of your organization. Software that&rsquo;s truly flexible, customizable to your workflows and processes, and tailored to your needs. Software like&nbsp;<a href="https://qatalog.com">Qatalog</a>.
Qatalog is a bespoke system that fits the form of your business and grows with it. Rather than your organization having to adopt a different way of working, Qatalog adapts to you, including your terminology, your communication style, and the values that matter.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s not just another tool to add to your software stack, though. Qatalog offers a Work Hub to manage all your operations &mdash; the way you like them to be managed &mdash; helping you to collaborate, communicate, document your knowledge, and everything else you need to do.&nbsp;
<a href="https://qatalog.com/demo/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Book a demo</a> to try a tool that keeps your company culture intact.&nbsp;

Software often forces teams into unwanted ways of communicating, collaborating, and organizing tasks. But it doesn’t have to.

How workplace tools shape your company culture

You might know already that the biggest competitor to most software companies is the humble spreadsheet. That&rsquo;s because a huge number of businesses continue to use spreadsheets to organize their data, track projects, manage finances, and more.&nbsp;
But this doesn&rsquo;t mean a spreadsheet is the best tool for the job. And even the most ardent Excel or Google Sheets fans admit that &ldquo;spreadsheet hell&rdquo; can quickly become a reality.&nbsp;
Sure, spreadsheets can be useful for storing and analyzing basic information &mdash; but if you want a scalable platform that facilitates complex workflows, improves team collaboration, and limits human error, they consistently fall short.
Here, we take a look at the shortcomings of spreadsheets, the downsides of relying on them, and highlight a more effective alternative.
<h3>The shortcomings of spreadsheets</h3>
We&rsquo;re all creatures of habit. If you&rsquo;ve been relying on spreadsheets for a while, it can be tough to disentangle yourself from your tried-and-tested ways of working.&nbsp;
So, take a step back for a minute, and look at your processes critically. You&rsquo;ve probably encountered one or more of the below spreadsheet issues before.
<h4>1. They&rsquo;re not ideal for scaling</h4>
Your business might begin as a close-knit startup team, but this rapidly changes with each new customer and every new recruit. It&rsquo;s hard for your spreadsheets to evolve with fast growth. Of course, they&rsquo;re important for data analysis. But when it comes to assigning tasks, coordinating projects, and organizing clients, for example, they&rsquo;re not sufficiently flexible or adaptable and quickly become unwieldy.
If your business already employs hundreds of people, you&rsquo;ll be all-too familiar with these scalability limits. In large and complex environments, spreadsheets simply don&rsquo;t work for certain tasks. One (usually untraceable) error can throw a whole sequence of important formulas out, which you&rsquo;ll then need to remedy. Which brings us to&hellip;
<h4>2. They&rsquo;re prone to human error</h4>
Raymond Panko, an author and IT management professor, has written prolifically on <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228662532_What_We_Know_About_Spreadsheet_Errors">human error in spreadsheets</a>. According to his research, approximately 88% of spreadsheet formulas have errors in them. Yes, you read that right.&nbsp;
This can be an issue if you&rsquo;re using a formula to keep track of overdue projects that need attention or clients who are due for renewal. An incorrect formula might mean that these critical milestones get missed.&nbsp;
These errors only get worse as spreadsheets become larger and more complicated and as more people contribute to them. The risk of having someone interfere with a spreadsheet when they don&rsquo;t have adequate knowledge can be serious. And even if they do know what they&rsquo;re doing, mistakes will continue to creep in &mdash; quite simply because there aren&rsquo;t enough guardrails.&nbsp;
<h4>3. They&rsquo;re static and uncollaborative</h4>
Different versions of different spreadsheets get saved locally on people&rsquo;s computers and shared across a variety of channels &mdash; including email, Slack, and in work drives. But who holds the master? And why is version 13 suddenly circulating when you thought everyone was still working on version 10? What changes have been made between then and now?
While collaborative spreadsheet platforms like Google Sheets have solved this to some extent, they&rsquo;re not without problems of their own. Even if you have editing, commenting, and access functionality included, people can still override each other if they&rsquo;re both working on the same sheet, and data can easily be changed or deleted without anyone noticing.
These version control and collaboration issues will also make it difficult to tell whether the right people have reviewed the information that&rsquo;s relevant to them. This increases the chances of errors continuing unchecked.&nbsp;
<h4>4. They don&rsquo;t offer a single version of the truth</h4>
This is perhaps the most concerning issue of all. If they&rsquo;re difficult to scale, susceptible to human error, and difficult to control, how can you trust your spreadsheets?&nbsp;
Are you really comfortable making a deal if you don&rsquo;t know if your data is accurate? Can you guarantee your business&rsquo;s sustainability and success if you&rsquo;re dealing with unknowns?
<h4>5. They don&rsquo;t allow for different types of content</h4>
Spreadsheets are great if you want to create a really big table with lots of information. But what if you need to link to other platforms, connect users to different resources, allow for detailed commenting and updates, and make important notes?
If you&rsquo;re looking for efficient ways to organize your work in an easy-to-use and centralized space, spreadsheets are likely to frustrate you time and again.
<h3>What are some practical examples of spreadsheet hell?</h3>
It's easy to mistake these issues for minor irritations or inconveniences. Sure, going through your spreadsheets and sorting out mistakes will cost you a bit of time, but that&rsquo;s probably it, right? Maybe it&rsquo;s worth the risk, especially if it&rsquo;s a platform you know well? Think again.
There are countless horror stories of spreadsheet problems having a real and material impact on businesses &mdash; including among some of the largest organizations in the world.
In an ironically asynchronous turn of events, the 2012 London Olympic team <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16409480">sold 10,000 more tickets</a> to the synchronized swimming event than it had available. The mistake? Someone typed up 20,000 rather than 10,000 in a spreadsheet that detailed the tickets available.
In its 2008 <a href="https://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=19135">purchase of Lehman Brothers&rsquo; assets</a>, Barclays hid, rather than deleted, certain cells in a spreadsheet and ended up buying 179 more contracts than it intended. Barclays had to file a legal relief motion to get out of the mess this spreadsheet error had created.&nbsp;
And JP Morgan&rsquo;s now famous <a href="https://www.thekeycuts.com/dear-analyst-38-breaking-down-an-excel-error-that-led-to-six-billion-loss-at-jpmorgan-chase/">London Whale disaster</a> cost the company a whopping $6.2&nbsp;billion when a manual copy-and-paste error led to a problem in its value-at-risk model.
These are just some of the most high-profile examples.&nbsp;
<h3>How to escape spreadsheet hell</h3>
Sorting out broken spreadsheets is exhausting, resource-intensive, and expensive. And failing to fix the mess is even worse long-term. But it doesn&rsquo;t have to be this way.
The first step in escaping spreadsheet hell is to ask yourself whether it really is the best tool for the job. Is there another platform that might do the job better, quicker, and more accurately?
We&rsquo;re not advocating here for another pitfall &mdash; <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-fix-saas-sprawl/">SaaS sprawl</a> &mdash; which is when you build up an out-of-control software stack in your search for the &ldquo;right&rdquo; tools. On the contrary, the point is to streamline and consolidate your systems by using something that manages your people, operations, and knowledge effortlessly. Something like <a href="https://qatalog.com/">Qatalog</a>.
Qatalog offers a bespoke centralized system that is scalable, connected, collaborative, and reliable. In other words, it&rsquo;s all the things spreadsheets are not. It&rsquo;s tailored to your unique needs (to the point of using your internal terminology), evolves side by side with your business, facilitates communication, and ensures that everyone has access to the information relevant to them. Ultimately, it offers a holistic view of your business that you can trust.&nbsp;
What&rsquo;s more, you can set it up and get started in no time at all. Simply tell us about your business, and&nbsp;<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-launches-worlds-first-ai-software-builder/" rel="follow">Qatalog will adapt your Work Hub to your requirements straight away</a>.
<a href="https://qatalog.com/demo/" target="_blank" rel="follow noopener">Book a demo to get started</a> and make spreadsheet hell a thing of the past.

Spreadsheet hell is a reality for many businesses. But there are some much better alternatives.

How to stop using spreadsheets to run your business

Spreadsheet hell is a reality for many businesses. But it’s possible to escape. Here’s how.

It's time to say goodbye to spreadsheet hell

Knowledge management has evolved far beyond simple documentation. Now, information is created and shared across dozens of apps &mdash; emails, project management tools, internal comms, files, folders, you name it.&nbsp;
Companies often turn to wikis like Notion and Confluence as a solution. These tools help you centralize knowledge (to an extent) and ensure everyone has access to the information they need. However, wikis like this have some major limitations, which is why more and more businesses are looking for alternatives.
So what are the benefits and drawbacks of company wikis? And why might Work Hubs be the future? Let&rsquo;s dive in.
<h3 dir="ltr">The benefits of a company wiki</h3>
Company wikis help businesses to simplify their knowledge management and help employees find the information they need quickly. Some of the benefits include:
Create a single source of truth for your company
Company wikis let you organize all your information in one place, so everyone from your organization can find the information they need and contribute to it. And (just like Wikipedia), company wikis use internal linking to connect knowledge &mdash; the idea is that you can access any information you need by navigating the platform. 
Equal access to information across the company
When you have teams or departments that work in silos, it&rsquo;s important to synchronize your knowledge sharing. Otherwise, you&rsquo;ll end up making decisions without all of the necessary information.&nbsp;
If you&rsquo;re planning to do sales outreach, for example, it&rsquo;s important to know what campaign marketing is running to nurture your audience. Or, if you work in product development, you&rsquo;ll want to know what feedback customers are sharing with the support team. This will help you plan future updates and prioritize features.
Company wikis should allow anyone to access the information they need, which helps to increase transparency.
Enable a self-serve culture
Qatalog&rsquo;s Killing Time at Work report revealed how <a href="https://language.work/research/killing-time-at-work/">employees prioritize flexibility</a>, and their expectations have evolved in favor of asynchronous communication (meaning that they don&rsquo;t have to be at the same place at the same time).&nbsp;
Nearly half of employees expect to have&nbsp;more flexibility in terms of when they work in the next three years, and creating a self-serve culture is key to this.&nbsp;
To make this happen, your employees need access to critical information without having to ask (and disturb) their colleagues or&nbsp;<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-gitlab-study-press-release/">feeling the pressures of presenteeism</a>.&nbsp;
A company wiki should help with this.&nbsp;&nbsp;
<h3 dir="ltr">The downsides of a wiki</h3>
Company wikis start to solve some of the most common knowledge-sharing woes, but they&rsquo;re far from perfect. Some of the downsides include:
A big time investment to set up
Setting up company wikis can take up a lot of time for several reasons. First, since these tools cater to a very general audience, they come with a large volume of features and customization options. The idea is to give you enough flexibility to create your own customized platform for knowledge sharing, but it can be overwhelming for the uninitiated. You&rsquo;ll likely need to familiarize yourself with the different interfaces, dashboards, modules, relationships, views, and integrations your wiki has to offer. Then, after learning how the platform works, and how to customize it, you&rsquo;ll need to properly organize your data. This means planning out information hierarchies (what are your core categories and subcategories, for example?) and the relationship between different information. You&rsquo;ll also need to consider your organization&rsquo;s structure &mdash; how big your company is, how fast you&rsquo;re scaling, and who should have access to what &mdash; to make sure you properly configure the system to meet your requirements.
Needs to be continuously updated in order to stay relevant
When your team members or colleagues from different departments need to make decisions, it&rsquo;s crucial that they have recent, relevant information. This means you have to actively make sure the information in your wiki is up to date, and that new information is added promptly when it comes in. This may sound simple enough, but when large teams or multiple departments are contributing to your wiki, it can quickly become an administrative headache. A very strong <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-documentation-culture/">documentation culture</a> is usually needed. Everyone has to be clear about how documents are created, where they&rsquo;re stored, and when (and how) they&rsquo;re accessed and updated.&nbsp;
They lack structure
Knowledge management is about more than just creating a big repository of information. You also need to <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/knowledge-management-is-pointless-without-structure/">have a structure in place</a> that enables your team to create, store, and navigate all this information effectively. Otherwise, chaos ensues. Just think about a library without a clear system for organizing the books. You wouldn&rsquo;t be able to find anything! Unfortunately, while company wikis are great for creating documents, they struggle with structure. As organizations grow and more team members get involved, there&rsquo;s lots more knowledge created and more team members who can edit the wiki, and things start to fall apart very quickly. Let&rsquo;s take Notion as an example, since many companies use it for knowledge management. The tool has two core building blocks, pages and tables, which you can link in different ways, giving you lots of flexibility. You can edit and customize your wiki however you want. But this isn&rsquo;t always a good thing.&nbsp;
When your team gets beyond 50 people, the number of users who can freely edit your wiki or change the structure often causes the platform to break. Typically, the only way to avoid this fate is to introduce strict oversight and monitoring of how people use the wiki, which isn&rsquo;t fun for anyone, and is very time consuming.&nbsp;
Enter Work Hubs.
<h3 dir="ltr">How wikis and Work Hubs are different &mdash; and why Work Hubs are better</h3>
A Work Hub is a single, structured platform that&rsquo;s part of your day-to-day workflow. It&rsquo;s where your team stores information, shares and manages projects, allocates tasks, provides feedback, and makes decisions.
Here&rsquo;s why Work Hubs are a big improvement on company wikis:
Seamless adoption
<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-company-wiki-notion-confluence/" rel="follow">We polled over 100 software companies</a> and found that 77% have no process for documenting and storing information. So when your People or Ops teams adopt a company wiki, they not only have to think of how to structure and organize knowledge, but also how to create a documentation culture.
In contrast, Work Hubs are living knowledge management systems. Information is constantly updated as people work, whether they&rsquo;re sharing updates or project details or uploading files. Your Work Hub becomes richer in information with minimal extra work. 
There&rsquo;s a lot more context around knowledge
Context is massively important in knowledge sharing, especially when different teams or departments tend to operate in silos. When team members access information, having context around it helps them make better, more informed decisions. A Work Hub links your organization&rsquo;s knowledge in a way that makes it easy for people to get more context. For example, because everything is connected, it&rsquo;s easy to see which projects and discussions a particular file or pitch deck is related to, which account a specific campaign is for, or who&rsquo;s working on a given task or project. Having context increases your team members&rsquo; visibility into each other&rsquo;s work, encouraging them to collaborate better and fueling their decision-making. 
Set-up is quick and easy
Traditionally, custom software has been mostly exclusive to tech giants, like Shopify, Meta, Google, etc. Meanwhile, the average business has been using off-the-shelf software that requires lots of customization and doesn't reflect the way their teams work.&nbsp;
<a href="https://qatalog.com/">Qatalog&rsquo;s Work Hub</a> democratizes access to custom software, providing you with a tailored platform to fit your business. Your Work Hub will reflect your organizational structure, the way your teams work and collaborate, the internal lexicon you use, and more. It&rsquo;s your platform for work, which makes adoption a lot easier, as the platform is intuitive for your team. It&rsquo;s also much quicker to set your Work Hub up because Qatalog AI automatically generates a custom platform that&rsquo;s tailored to your needs. You can then fine tune it to meet your exact specifications, or we can help you.
Permissions are easier to manage
Since your Work Hub reflects your organization&rsquo;s structure, it&rsquo;s also much easier to manage access and permissions. Instead of giving everyone permission to edit and customize your Work Hub, you can have a structure that reflects people&rsquo;s responsibilities. So you don&rsquo;t have to worry about your Work Hub breaking down as you scale. 
Work Hubs replace a bunch of other tools
Qatalog&rsquo;s Work Hub is one of the quickest, most effective ways to reduce the number of tools you use. Instead of adding another platform to the pile, a Work Hub lets you manage projects, store and share knowledge, collaborate on documents, manage customer relationships, share company updates, and much more, in one place.&nbsp;
<h3 dir="ltr">Work Hubs: The bottom line</h3>
As we&rsquo;ve learned, wikis are a good start, but they&rsquo;re painful to set up, hard to use, require constant upkeep, and often break once your company reaches a certain size.&nbsp;
Qatalog&rsquo;s Work Hub addresses all these problems with a structured and scalable platform that&rsquo;s built to your specific requirements so that it&rsquo;s easy for everyone to use.&nbsp;
To find out how Qatalog could replace your company wiki, <a href="https://qatalog.com/demo/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">book a call with one of our team today</a>.

A quick guide to the key differences between wikis and Work Hubs.

Choosing between a company wiki and a Work Hub

The number of software tools we use at work has grown exponentially in recent years, giving rise to the phenomenon known as &lsquo;<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-fix-saas-sprawl/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">SaaS sprawl</a>.&rsquo; On average, <a href="https://www.okta.com/sites/default/files/2022-02/Businesses-at-Work-2022-Annual-Report.pdf">companies now use 89 software applications</a>, rising to 187 in companies of more than 2,000 people. In response, software providers like Notion, Airtable, and ClickUp have tried to combine the functionality and feature sets of multiple applications into a single platform which can be customized to fit your requirements.&nbsp;&nbsp;
However, the process of setting up these systems is often a slow and difficult process, requiring a huge investment of time and resources, which can run into hundreds of hours over several months. You might think that&rsquo;s a worthwhile investment, but it doesn&rsquo;t look so good if you still end up with a solution that&rsquo;s clunky and hard to use, rather than the smooth and seamless experience you were hoping for.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Fortunately, Qatalog uses the latest technology in generative AI to make your setup quick and easy, giving you a bespoke operating system to run your business in just a couple of minutes. But before we get into that, it&rsquo;s worth understanding why setting up software like this has traditionally been so painful.&nbsp;
<h3 dir="ltr">1. It takes a long time</h3>
Setting up tools like Notion, ClickUp, and Airtable can be a very time-intensive process for a number of reasons. First, the sheer volume of features and customization options can be overwhelming, especially if you&rsquo;re not familiar with them. You&rsquo;ve got to get to grips with types, tables, views, databases, hierarchies, relationships, dashboards, and integrations. The possibilities are almost endless, so the first step is to learn how the tool actually works and what you can do.&nbsp;
Another reason it&rsquo;s so time intensive is the need for proper data organization. In order to get the most out of these tools, users need to carefully plan out their data structure and ensure everyone will be entering information in a consistent and organized manner. This requires careful thought and attention to detail, as even small errors can impact the effectiveness of the tool in the long run.
And then you have the laborious process of actually designing and building everything. You&rsquo;ll need to consider the structure of your organization and think about how best to configure the system to fit your requirements. Depending on the size and complexity of the company, this can take a while, and it can be very fiddly joining up databases and making sure everything is working as it should.&nbsp;
<h3 dir="ltr">2. Templates aren&rsquo;t a quick fix</h3>
Templates are often touted as a solution to this problem, but they&rsquo;re no silver bullet. The first problem is that they&rsquo;re still very generalized and typically fail to take account of the nuances of your business. For example, it&rsquo;s easy to find templates for a marketing team or for project management. However, you&rsquo;d be hard pressed to find templates for a marketing team in a fund management business or a project management template for a logistics firm, both of which will look very different to the generic templates.&nbsp;
Most templates are also optimized for individuals and teams. They rarely consider how an entire business fits together, and trying to piece together 20 different team level templates is going to end very badly, with inconsistent processes and data capture, and a complete lack of overall structure.&nbsp;
This relates to the other downside of templates; <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-avoid-using-spreadsheets/" rel="follow">they are incredibly fragile</a>. This is because they rely on strict adherence to the template for them to function properly. Any deviation can cause a deluge of errors, and if you try to use a stack of templates joined together, the outcome will likely be disastrous.
<h3 dir="ltr">3. You end up relying on technical experts</h3>
For large and medium-sized companies, the complexity of implementing and setting up these tools means that you&rsquo;re likely to need a small team of technical experts and operational folks to get it right, which has a cost attached. It&rsquo;s also worth noting that while they are technically low-code or no-code tools, you&rsquo;re likely to still need some basic coding skills or use complex formulas to get the best out of them. Again, this may require someone with a technical background. In many organizations, people like this may be in short supply or in very high-demand, which can slow down the process quite significantly.&nbsp;&nbsp;
<h3 dir="ltr">4. The job is never&nbsp;really done</h3>
Even after successfully setting up software, you&rsquo;re never really done. Maintenance and oversight is an ongoing requirement, especially once you get hundreds of people using some of these tools.&nbsp;
This is because of the level of customization that&rsquo;s possible without a clear permissions system in place, a problem that Notion in particular suffers with. Allowing everyone the freedom to build their own workspace might sound like a good thing at first, but if everyone starts making changes, it quickly becomes chaotic and the entire structure breaks down. The result is likely to be frustrated employees who can&rsquo;t access or store the information they need.&nbsp;
Findings from Qatalog and Cornell University&rsquo;s&nbsp;<a href="https://language.work/research/workgeist/">Workgeist report</a> reflect this, with 54% of respondents saying that software tools have actually made it harder to find the information they need, even though the opposite should be true. To avoid this, you&rsquo;ll likely need guidelines in place, as well as people to monitor the tools and ensure the guidelines are actually being followed.&nbsp;
<h3 dir="ltr">An (almost) effortless setup experience</h3>
Until now, setting up new software tools was an experience you'd want to forget. Try Qatalog.
With Qatalog, you get a made-to-measure platform with all the functionality you need in one place, and getting started takes about 100 seconds. Just tell us a bit about your business and we&rsquo;ll create a single, centralized Work Hub to run your company&rsquo;s operations, tailored to your needs.&nbsp;
This is possible because of Qatalog AI, which deeply understands how different businesses and industries operate and is <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/no-excuse-for-one-size-fits-all-software/" rel="follow">able to construct bespoke software to meet those requirements</a>.
We know the AI won&rsquo;t get it&nbsp;exactly right every time just yet, so we&rsquo;ve made sure it&rsquo;s super easy for the designated admins to configure the system to your specific requirements, all without a single line of code required. And the clear permission system means you don&rsquo;t have to worry about someone breaking a template or redesigning the structure. You can just set it, and forget about it.&nbsp;
There&rsquo;s no lengthy setup times and endless hours joining up databases. No need to bring in technical experts. No more unnecessary software bloat. Just a single centralized Work Hub that fits like a glove and grows effortlessly with you.
To discover how Qatalog can centralize your operations and streamline your tool stack without the painful setup process,&nbsp;<a href="https://qatalog.com/demo/" rel="follow">book a call with our Customer Team.</a>

Setting up custom tools used to be painful, but Qatalog makes it quick and easy.

100 hours to 100 seconds - Speed up your software setup

100 hours to 100 seconds — How to speed up your software setup

Technology is supposed to help your teams work together, improve your productivity, save everyone time, and free people up from the most mundane tasks. And while this does happen, in many cases, software tools are actually hurting your team's productivity.&nbsp;

<a href="https://www.okta.com/sites/default/files/2022-02/Businesses-at-Work-2022-Annual-Report.pdf">Research has found</a> that companies are using a lot more apps than they can manage comfortably. Businesses with a few hundred people are using 89 apps on average, while larger companies (those with more than 2,000 employees) are using almost twice as many. People are getting bogged down by notifications, they find it difficult to locate key information, and struggle to get their heads around one-size-fits-all apps that don&rsquo;t match the structure of their business.&nbsp;

In fact, it&rsquo;s precisely because these tools are so generic that businesses keep having to add more of them, because they don&rsquo;t have all the functionality required, meaning more needed to fill the gap. At the same time, you&rsquo;ll see new tools rolled out with great fanfare only to be scrapped 12 months later, either because no one wants to use them, or no one has figured out how. And the cycle continues.&nbsp;

All of this means companies are suffering with an expensive sprawl of generic tools and point solutions that don&rsquo;t work together and severely damage productivity. Custom software is the obvious solution to this problem, but it&rsquo;s traditionally been out of reach for most companies, due to the large costs and complexity involved. That was until Qatalog.&nbsp;

Qatalog is on a mission to democratize access to custom software, giving every business a made-to-measure operating system to run their business, in a fraction of the time and cost. But before we get into that, let&rsquo;s explain what custom software is, why it&rsquo;s useful, and why it&rsquo;s not been accessible until now.&nbsp;
<h3>What is custom software?</h3>
Custom software is precisely what it sounds like &mdash; it refers to software applications that are tailored specifically to your business&rsquo;s needs. They&rsquo;re not only designed with your organization&rsquo;s unique tasks, processes, and workflow in mind, but also with your preferred terminology.&nbsp;

Tech giants like Meta, Amazon, Stripe, and Shopify use custom software to manage their internal operations because they realized that generic off-the-shelf solutions don&rsquo;t cut it. But that&rsquo;s just the tip of the iceberg. All sorts of companies have either built their own solution or used external developers to design something specifically for their needs.&nbsp;

These are some of its big advantages:

1. It&rsquo;s tailored to your needs
By design, off-the-shelf software exists to cater to a general audience. That means it&rsquo;ll have features you don&rsquo;t need, and your team will need to adapt to the platform's structure, workflows, and terminology. Also, the SaaS provider may prioritize product updates and developments that don&rsquo;t necessarily benefit you.&nbsp;

In contrast, custom software is tailored to your business&rsquo;s specific requirements in a way that off-the-shelf software simply can&rsquo;t be. You get all of the features you need, and not the ones you don&rsquo;t. The UI/UX is designed to suit your organization&rsquo;s unique workflow, and developments and update schedules are determined by your priorities.&nbsp;

2. It can replace multiple solutions
<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-fix-saas-sprawl/">SaaS sprawl</a> has gotten out of hand. As we mentioned earlier, large organizations are using close to 200 apps. But what&rsquo;s driving this behavior?

Put simply, your team has some problems that need solving, so you search for a&nbsp; software tool to help out. Of course, it&rsquo;d be great if you found one app that meets all your requirements, but that&rsquo;s rare. It&rsquo;s more likely that you find a tool that does three out of the five things required &mdash; so you&rsquo;re forced to find some other tools to fill the gaps.&nbsp;

But if you choose custom software, you can often create a platform that fulfills all five functions, avoiding the need for lots of individual point solutions. And this one tool will be tailored to your business, so you won&rsquo;t have any unnecessary features either.&nbsp;

3.It feels more intuitive
Off-the-shelf software comes with existing terminology and workflows that your team will need to get used to. As a result, these apps can be less intuitive, and adoption can be trickier. By contrast, custom software reflects your organization&rsquo;s existing structure, terminology and workflows.

Just think of all the nuances in internal communication, for example. Your team might call certain types of work &ldquo;campaigns,&rdquo; for example. Or perhaps your engineering team works in &ldquo;sprints&rdquo; not &ldquo;tasks.&rdquo; Now, because your custom software reflects familiar terminology you actually use, new adopters intuitively know where to look.&nbsp;

<h3>Why custom software has been inaccessible</h3>
We&rsquo;ve established that custom software has plenty to offer. So why is it still relatively rare?
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">It can be expensive to build. Cost-effectiveness is a big reason why off-the-shelf SaaS tools are the default. Instead of paying to build your own custom software, you &ldquo;rent&rdquo; someone else&rsquo;s platform for a fraction of the cost. To build your own system internally, you&rsquo;ll need to hire a team of talented (and expensive) engineers. But outsourcing is just as expensive, if not more so, with costs often reaching hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to build. That&rsquo;s why SaaS has traditionally made more sense. </li>
<li aria-level="1">Design and implementation take time. Building a solution to specifically meet your company&rsquo;s needs isn&rsquo;t easy, and it requires a good deal of time and expertise to pull off. Your engineering team (or the external consultancy you hire) will need to design software around your unique processes and workflows. Depending on the complexity of what you&rsquo;re building, it will likely require lots of conversations with people from across your company and lots of review meetings. &nbsp; &nbsp; </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">Maintenance and development costs. With custom software, there&rsquo;s the build costs and the ongoing maintenance costs to think about. This can be a resource drain. When you use SaaS, the provider takes care of all the updates, testing, bug fixes, and general maintenance. SaaS providers are also incentivized to keep developing the product and implementing new features, to keep them relevant to their audience. When you use custom software, you&rsquo;ll need to keep investing in development so the tool doesn&rsquo;t become outdated.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>

So, although custom software has a number of big advantages, the cost, complexity, and time required means most companies have little choice but to keep using the one-size-fits-all solutions.&nbsp;

<h3>The democratization of custom software</h3>
Instead of hiring an expensive consultancy or a team of in-house developers, Qatalog allows you to create a custom Work Hub in under a minute, using Qatalog AI. It can then be precisely configured to fit your exact needs, with zero code required and zero technical knowledge. It&rsquo;s as easy as changing the settings on your phone.&nbsp;&nbsp;

We&rsquo;ve got tech startups, agencies, consultancies, real estate firms, galleries, investment firms, manufacturing companies, and everything in between using Qatalog and each one has their own bespoke operating system to run their business. If a company uses specific terminology to reflect a distinct operating model or culture, this is also mirrored. This effectively allows Qatalog to reproduce the operations of any company and make them digitally native.

For example, agencies and consultancies often use it to create a clear system to organize their clients, centralize all the work related to projects and campaigns, manage the services they offer, and create flexible and connected teams. This helps their new joiners get up to speed quickly, as they can access all the info they need from one place.

Many of these businesses would never have considered custom software before, either because of the cost, time to deliver, or the complexity involved. With Qatalog, they now have a custom Work Hub that centralizes their people, processes, and knowledge, with all the functionality they need, in a single platform.&nbsp;

It enables an entirely new way of building a tool stack for a company &mdash; and one that is radically simplified. No more bloat and wasted budgets. Just software that fits. And because everything is connected, work becomes visible, processes are automated, and collaboration is supercharged.

<a href="https://qatalog.com/demo/" rel="follow">Book a call</a> to see how Qatalog can help simplify your tool stack and supercharge collaboration with a bespoke Work Hub designed just for you.

Custom software is tailored to your needs and streamlines your tool stack. But it hasn't always been accessible to most companies, until now.

There’s no excuse for using one-size-fits-all software

There’s no excuse for one-size-fits-all software anymore

If you tally up how many SaaS apps your organization is using, you start to realize how easy it is for SaaS sprawl to get out of hand. <a href="https://productiv.com/resources/the-state-of-saas-sprawl/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Research by Productiv </a>found that companies are using 254 apps and tools on average.
This means your team members are probably spending lots of time switching between different tools, learning to use new apps, and sorting through notifications &mdash; some of which won&rsquo;t be relevant to them. In other words, SaaS sprawl is killing productivity. It's time to reign it in.
<h3>What is SaaS sprawl?</h3>
SaaS sprawl is when an organization builds up a very large SaaS tool stack without properly vetting or managing them. As a result, they end up with more tools than they can reasonably manage, harming productivity and draining resources.&nbsp;
It often creeps up on organizations over time. To understand why this happens, we first need to consider how companies use off-the-shelf SaaS solutions.&nbsp;
Since SaaS apps are designed for the provider's general audience &mdash; and not your company specifically &mdash; they might lack important features you need. When this happens, it's natural to add more tools to your stack, to fill the gaps. In large organizations this happens many times over, as different teams have their own way of working and tool stacks.
The fact that company leaders don't always know how these tools are being used can make things worse. In fact, Productiv&rsquo;s report revealed that only 45% of registered accounts actively use the SaaS tools their company provides, but leaders often lack the visibility to identify and address this wastage.
<h3>How SaaS sprawl harms productivity</h3>
Our <a href="https://language.work/research/workgeist/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">research with Cornell University</a> revealed that SaaS sprawl is killing productivity in multiple ways, hampering our ability to manage, access, share, and create knowledge at work. &nbsp;
Finding important information has become difficult
<ul>
<li>Software tools should make it easier for users to manage and find information, but our research has shown that employees spend an average of five hours a week searching for information inside apps. Worse yet, 54% of the people we surveyed said that these different applications actually make it harder for them to find the information they need.</li>
<li>People are spending too much time browsing through project management tools, cloud storage, and chat logs, when this time could be better spent working productively.</li>
</ul>
Context switching is deterring focused work
<ul>
<li>Context switching is when you move from one task to another. It can often happen when you toggle between tabs, switch apps, or even change conversations. The more apps you&rsquo;re using, the more you&rsquo;re constantly switching between them, which can seriously impede your ability to focus.</li>
<li>In our research with Cornell University, we learned that people take around nine and a half minutes to get back into a good workflow after switching apps. And since they spend 36 minutes a day switching between tasks, it&rsquo;s safe to say that their workflow is constantly being disrupted. It should come as no surprise, then, that 45% of the people we surveyed said that context switching was making them less productive.</li>
</ul>
Too many tools can create information silos
<ul>
<li>SaaS sprawl is not only harming productivity on an individual level, but our research revealed that it may also deepen departmental silos. Some 57% of surveyed users reported that they're not sure that all departments are using the same apps. While the sales team is centered around a CRM, the content team might be working on a project management tool, and the customer service team could be using yet another system.</li>
<li>This becomes especially problematic when teams need access to data from different departments. Unsurprisingly, 55% of people indicated that it's difficult to get information from other departments when they use different apps, and 56% of employees have to ask more than one person for help when they're trying to access data from the company's tool stack.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<h3>How to get your SaaS sprawl under control</h3>
Software is supposed to make work easier, not more complicated. It's time to win back your team's productivity by reducing software bloat. Here&rsquo;s how.
Start with a tool audit The first step toward getting your software bloat under control is to conduct a thorough technical audit. If you're not directly responsible for your organization's tool stack, you'll want to ask your IT or operations team to audit the following:
<ul>
<li>Which SaaS apps your organization is using</li>
<li>The subscription costs for each app</li>
<li>How often team members are using each app (many SaaS providers let you see your usage limits, otherwise, you'll need to talk to team members directly to get this information)</li>
<li>The renewal plans for each app</li>
</ul>
It&rsquo;s also worth talking to team members and department heads directly to potentially uncover "shadow tools" &mdash; the ones that teams are using without approval.&nbsp;
Talk to your team members Each team may have different needs and pain points and individual employees will have their own issues. So when you talk to them directly, you can uncover valuable information to help reduce your SaaS sprawl.
For example, are people using different project management tools? Did one person find Asana difficult to set up, while another couldn't wrap their head around Notion's blank-slate approach? Is someone else logging all their tasks on a personal Todoist account?
In some teams, you might also discover that people are using multiple tools with overlapping functionality because each app lacks a specific feature they need.
Centralize your tool stack After collecting and organizing the information about your tool stack, you'll likely realize any combination of the following:
<ul>
<li>Your teams are using too many tools, including many that are similar​</li>
<li>Some tools aren't seeing much use and are draining budgets</li>
<li>People aren't on the same page about the apps they're using</li>
<li>There isn't a lot of visibility into your tool stack</li>
</ul>
After conducting your audit, start by getting different teams' buy-in to reduce sprawl. They might not realize the full impact of SaaS sprawl until you walk them through it, so it&rsquo;s crucial to get them onside, especially given there might be a bit of disruption during the transition. &nbsp;
Then, it's time to start centralizing your tool stack. See if you can get your teams to use one project management tool, one knowledge management system, one app for tracking metrics and KPIs, and so on.&nbsp;
However, you might find that it&rsquo;s still hard to find tools that meet everyone's needs. If so, you might want to consider using custom software (more on this in the next section).
Consider the value of custom software Unlike off-the-shelf tools that are designed for general audiences, custom software is tailored to the way your organization works. It's built around your workflows and needs, and uses the same terminology that your teams do internally.&nbsp;
With custom software, you can radically simplify your tool stack by creating a tailor-made solution that meets your company&rsquo;s precise needs, instead of switching between multiple apps for different features.&nbsp;
Traditionally, custom software like this has been far too expensive to design, build, and maintain for most companies, and it often takes a long time to implement. Qatalog has made custom software accessible to almost any business, at a fraction of the time and cost.
With Qatalog, you can replace the stack of generic project management tools, knowledge bases, document editors, and task managers that don't reflect the way your teams work. In its place, you&rsquo;ll get a made-to-measure platform with all the functionality you need in one place, which you can customize to fit your specific requirements, with no code required. It&rsquo;s a unifying software layer that runs across your entire business and integrates seamlessly with specialized tools like Figma, GitHub, and Salesforce.&nbsp;
The best part? Getting started with Qatalog takes less than a minute. Just let us know what kind of business you're in, and our AI powered software builder will create a single, centralized Work Hub to run your company&rsquo;s operations in seconds, tailored to your needs.&nbsp;
To find out more how Qatalog can help centralize your company operations and streamline your tool stack, <a href="https://qatalog.com/demo/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">book a call with our Customer Team</a>.&nbsp;

SaaS sprawl is killing productivity due to endless context switching and information silos. Here's how to fix it.

How to fix SaaS sprawl | Qatalog

SaaS sprawl is killing productivity due to endless context switching and information silos. Learn how to fix it.

SaaS sprawl is killing productivity. Here’s how to fix it

Your business is unique. The products, customers, employees, structure, industry, markets, processes, goals, communication style - everything is distinct. But the software tools you use to do your jobs are not. 
And you&rsquo;re using hundreds of them. Research suggests your company of a few hundred people is using <a href="https://www.okta.com/sites/default/files/2022-02/Businesses-at-Work-2022-Annual-Report.pdf" rel="follow">89 apps</a> on average, up 24% from 2016. And if you work in a larger company of 2,000 people or more, it&rsquo;s almost twice that. No wonder it often feels so hard to keep up with the endless stream of notifications. 
Software bloat is running out of control, with a sprawl of generic tools, and the customer has been overlooked. We've created endless iterations of spreadsheets and documents for almost every problem, but none of these tools reflect the way our business actually thinks or operates. We need to take a step back and consider and empower how an organization actually functions in order to better serve our customers. 
The problem is so pervasive that we are almost desensitized to it. It&rsquo;s as if we have forgotten that digital technology was meant to make our lives easier. Make no mistake, today&rsquo;s software often feels like forcing square pegs into round holes. 
For starters, each piece of software brings an entirely new set of terminology into your business&rsquo; lexicon, which you&rsquo;re now forced to use. Is it a board or a workspace? A database or a dashboard? An interface or a channel? The list goes on. Then it shoehorns a bunch of processes and structure into the way your team operates, with a completely different way of organizing your work. This often triggers the following sequence: 
<ul>
<li>Adoption is limited - Some people in the team struggle to get their head around the new tool. Although they have had some training, there are new words for everything, redesigned processes, and additional information required. It doesn&rsquo;t feel intuitive at all, so they just stop using it and carry on as before.</li>
<li> Workarounds are created - Although &lsquo;X tool&rsquo; has most of the functionality required, it becomes clear that it&rsquo;s missing a few important capabilities, so another tool is needed to fill the gap. Some kind of workaround is created where information has to be copied manually from one place to another. It just about works, but the process has now become clunky and crucial information is often lost. </li>
<li>Back to square one - The combination of weak adoption and broken processes starts to hurt productivity and damage team morale. The intended goal of improving efficiency seems like a distant memory and the concern amongst management is that it&rsquo;s having the opposite effect. 12-18 months later, after a huge investment of time and money, they scrap it and look for an alternative. </li>
</ul>
It&rsquo;s a cycle that is repeated over and over, as companies search in vain for a workable solution but all the while, their software subscriptions keep rising. It&rsquo;s astonishing really, because all the companies we speak to want to reduce the number of tools they use. The first reason is obvious. Paying for hundreds of software subscriptions is insanely expensive. But the second reason is arguably even more costly, and that&rsquo;s the enormous hit to productivity and employee experience. 
This was laid bare by a recent study of <a href="https://hbr.org/2022/08/how-much-time-and-energy-do-we-waste-toggling-between-applications" rel="follow">a Fortune 500 company</a> which revealed that its employees were switching applications and websites 1,200 times each day on average. It estimated this took two seconds each time, equivalent to just under four hours a week, or 9% of their annual time at work. As the study describes, &ldquo;for most employees, there isn&rsquo;t an obvious way to avoid ping-ponging between documents, websites, and apps &mdash; it&rsquo;s just how the work has to be done&rdquo;. 
This echoes the findings from <a href="https://language.work/research/workgeist/" rel="follow">our own research with Cornell University</a>. We found that employees are wasting an hour every day trying to find information hidden within apps, and 43% say they spend too much time switching between them. All of this context switching slows us down, but it also makes it harder to focus and, over time, increases our stress levels. 
There is a clear paradox here. The very tools that were supposed to make us more productive are doing the opposite. 
<h2>A failure to innovate </h2>
All of this points to why work often feels so broken. We&rsquo;re using a stack of generic tools, all patched together, to run entire companies. You might think this represents a failure of leadership or management. I believe it represents the abject failure of the technology industry to innovate, because businesses have been left without a viable alternative. 
We&rsquo;ve created thousands upon thousands of apps and tools developed to solve specific problems, with zero regard for the bigger picture and how all these disparate pieces join together. Instead, we have focused on making incremental improvements, whether it&rsquo;s a slightly better document editor, a task management tool with barely distinguishable feature set, a marginally more functional sheet, or a new take on messenger apps. Huge amounts of brain power, capital, and effort, but the net result is stagnation. 
To give customers what they deserve with the technology we have at our disposal, we need to think bigger. 
Qatalog 2.0 is launching on December 6. Follow our team on <a href="https://twitter.com/qatalog" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Twitter</a> for the announcement.

We need to think bigger. Something new is coming.

The end of an era

'Tools that changed the world (of work)' is a social series run by Qatalog, where we explore how different historical innovations revolutionized the way we work. Nowadays we often focus on technological advancements, but simple things like stone tools, written&nbsp;language and pieces of paper once&nbsp;heralded even more important changes. At Qatalog, we are constantly inspired to innovate; and inspiration can come from&nbsp;the most obscure parts of history. Keep up with the series on our <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/qatalog/mycompany/?viewAsMember=true" rel="follow">LinkedIn</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/qataloghq/" rel="follow">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/qatalog" rel="follow">Twitter</a>.
<h2>Coffee</h2>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/oBnvhmSvQOKjxFee6pQT" alt="undefined" width="661" height="446" />
On average, people around the world consume <a href="https://coffeeabout.com/coffee-consumption-by-country/">400 billion cups of coffee each year</a>, making this precious brown beverage the most exported global commodity, second only to oil.&nbsp;
Unsurprisingly, it is most popular in colder countries, with Finland topping the list as the world&rsquo;s biggest coffee consumer (each Finn consumes roughly 12kg of coffee beans per year, which is about the same weight as a new car tire, for scale).
We don&rsquo;t just like coffee - we need it. Coffee, or more specifically the <a href="https://www.monster.ca/career-advice/article/why-coffee-increases-productivity-ca">caffeine</a> within it, releases stimulants that help to keep us alert throughout the working day. In small doses, it has been proven to improve our productivity, relieve stress, and even decrease pain while at your desk. But for some, this craving can become an addiction that their productivity is dependent on.
So where did this&nbsp;beverage come from, and how did it evolve to become the coffee we know and love today?
Dating all the way back to around 850 AD, legend says that coffee was first discovered in Ethiopia by a humble goat farmer named Kaldi. But it wasn&rsquo;t in the classic bean form as you might expect - the story goes that Kaldi would often notice his goats acting rather energetic after consuming berries from a certain tree while grazing; he then reported his findings to a local monastery who made a drink with those very same berries and, et voila! Coffee was born (well, sort of).
It wouldn&rsquo;t take its familiar bean form until it reached the Arabian Peninsula around the 15th century. There, coffee was popularized as an energizing drink and sold in public coffee houses, where people engaged in intellectual conversation, played chess, and listened to music. Soon, coffee houses would become a hub for the educated elite, often referred to as &ldquo;Schools of the Wise&rdquo;.
The drink would begin to resemble the coffee we know today as it reached Europe in the 17th century, and sugar began to be added to curb some of that classic bitterness. And now, as we covered earlier, you&rsquo;ll find it being served just about anywhere.
<h2>Paper money</h2>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/dHcAj7QuK8ZVjGD2yWQ5" alt="undefined" width="661" height="446" />
Can you imagine slogging to the end of the month only to find out that your usual paycheck has been substituted for a 20-kilo bag of coins. Talk about a heavy day at work.
But thanks to the invention of paper money, this is no longer the reality.
Like paper, printed money was another Chinese innovation, coming into circulation during the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/the-invention-of-paper-money-195167">Song Dynasty</a> in the 11th century as an alternative to precious metal coins. The obvious benefit of paper currency was that it was much easier to carry in large amounts &mdash; people no longer had to worry about where they would store their money if it became too inconvenient to carry. But the risks were still rife, with counterfeiting and inflation suddenly becoming more common than ever.
Despite this though, paper money took off. The Song Dynasty established the first-ever government-produced currency &mdash; jiaozi (though the exact date of which is unknown).
Factories were established to print money across China and by 1265, jiaozi became an official national currency, meaning it could be used anywhere in the country. But its impact was most keenly felt by merchants. Rather than carrying large amounts of cash with them on the road, they were able to drop coins off at government licensed deposit shops. In return they were issued jiaozi, which was far easier for them to travel with and trade for goods.
But, while the Song Dynasty wasn&rsquo;t to last (falling to the Mongols in 1279), paper money would have a global impact, reaching the west by the 1600s, and your pay packet by the end of each month.
<h2>Paper</h2>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/Ol2OjJ4eRJuPlVFImU3R" alt="undefined" width="662" height="447" />
With almost every business today relying on some form of digital documentation, it's hard to remember the heyday of the humble piece of paper.&nbsp;For thousands of years, we have relied on paper to store information, help us accomplish the most basic of tasks at work, and up until very recently, to pay our bills.
Invented in China between 25-220 CE, its first use was actually for wrapping precious objects! But soon people began to write on it as it was far cheaper than silk or bamboo.This development soon spurred a widespread reading culture across the country; for the first time ever, people could own entire books and personal scrolls without having to share them with the community. In fact, by the 6th century, it was practically a social rite for educated men to own at least a few hundred scrolls.
But it wasn&rsquo;t just reading that was predominantly affected by paper. Art, poetry and calligraphy all took off too. Paper then spread to the Arabic world, but wouldn&rsquo;t be adopted by Europe until the 15th century.&nbsp;As industry took off, paper could be found everywhere &mdash; from contracts to advertising materials, and everything in between.
And considering how we work now, it&rsquo;s easy to see how paper inspired a new culture of digital documentation, with tools that resemble pages.
But in today&rsquo;s digital world, there are almost no limits to the experiences we can create. So, what comes next?&nbsp;
<h2>Cuneiform</h2>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/bwn60A17QkaigBSbrmqo" alt="undefined" width="660" height="446" />
Could you imagine trying to do your job without writing anything?
With so much of our working lives online, it&rsquo;s hard to imagine how we would communicate effectively without it - or how society would even function.
But for millennia humans relied on pictographic symbols, often known as &lsquo;proto-writing&rsquo;. That was until around 3500 BC when a script known as Cuneiform was developed from pictographs by Ancient Sumerians.&nbsp;
Often carved into stone tablets like the one pictured, Cuneiform is considered one of the most important advancements in the history of writing to date. No longer did people have to struggle with understanding the meaning of each pictographic symbol &mdash; Cuneiform allowed readers to comprehend written language through a series of strokes and lines.
And it revolutionized the way people worked. Following its creation, it was used widely to keep records of commercial transactions, formalize the legal system, and retain important information about social and political history.
So it&rsquo;s fair to say that Cuneiform changed the world (of work). So, what do you think - should we try creating the next version of Qatalog on a stone tablet?&nbsp;
<h2>The ChopperNHB2013-02228</h2>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/x1nrkjT1KESKaXJ8VBgQ" alt="undefined" width="661" height="446" />
It&rsquo;s estimated that there are around <a href="https://www.becomingminimalist.com/clutter-stats/">300,000 objects in the average American home</a>. From coffee machines to laptops to cars to toothbrushes; we rely on hundreds of objects to simply get us through the day.&nbsp;
But what if we told you there was a time when humans relied on one very simple object to do lots of things?
Well, meet the snappily named ChopperNHB2013-02228.&nbsp;
The Chopper (for short) was an upgrade from your average rock &mdash; defined by its irregular shape, which was created through the removal of stone flakes from one side. This tool was a must-have 2.5 million years ago when it came to woodworking, spear-sharpening or meat-processing. Later on, the design was advanced in order to create the more modern hand ax.
But what does all this have to do with Qatalog? We&rsquo;re glad you asked. The chopper changed the way we work &mdash; and Qatalog plans to do the same.
Join us over the next few months as we uncover more tools that revolutionized the way we work (in chronological-ish order). Just head to our socials to stay up to speed

Follow our new social series, where we explore how different historical innovations revolutionised the way we work.

Tools that changed the world (of work) | Qatalog

Before the invention of the Internet or the first Apple computer, the simplest tools created the biggest waves in the world of work.

Tools that changed the world (of work)

Imagine joining a company, where you have no idea who is on what team, who is reporting to who and have no general oversight of how the organization is made up. This might make your <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/create-a-seamless-onboarding-experience/" rel="follow">onboarding process</a> a little disorientating, not to mention time-consuming for your hiring manager, right?
Or imagine that you need to talk to someone in another team, but there is no way for you to understand who is on that team or what projects they currently work on. You will probably end up asking around and pinging at least 2 or 3 people to find out (which let&rsquo;s be honest, nobody wants to do).
Or imagine that you need to go into a cross-functional meeting and there's no way for you to look up the people who are going to be in the room, or their job functions, to get some context beforehand.&nbsp;
All of these examples have been a problem for years, but the <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/technology-has-failed/" rel="follow">shift to remote work has exaggerated them</a>, as you can no longer walk around a physical office and introduce yourself.&nbsp;
That&rsquo;s where organization charts come in.
<h2>What is an Organization Chart?</h2>
In their most basic form, organizational charts, organizational structures, business charts, organigrams, or just <a href="https://qatalog.com/org-charts/" rel="follow">Org Charts</a> as we dotingly call them here at Qatalog, are a diagram format representation of the hierarchy of an organization.&nbsp;
The usual organizational chart is built with the purpose of showing the relationship between individuals, or how one team is tied to another. The viewer can get a sense of how much responsibility sits on each name by looking at the number of connections underneath.&nbsp;
For the analytically-minded, there are subtle hints to how a company functions; where decisions are made, management approaches, and areas where the most (or least) human resources are invested.&nbsp;
<h2>The hierarchy of Organizational Chart creators</h2>
If we could make a hierarchical chart of Org Charts, at the bottom you&rsquo;d find the static, Microsoft Word, or Powerpoint drawn images. This jumble of lines and shapes is made for single use, left to be forgotten in dark corners of hard drives.&nbsp;
One step above, live the customizable org chart creators. They can be aesthetically enhanced through templates, colors, and graphics and usually allow for drag and drop positioning &mdash; a company directory playground. However, many of them come at a steep price and require tedious manual work to edit, which means they are rarely up to date or reflect the true realities of a company. Most org chart software will pull up a visual representation of your directory at the exact time of its creation. But that&rsquo;s all they will do.&nbsp;
Our Product Managers had a better idea. Using our <a href="https://qatalog.com/work-hub/" rel="follow">Work Hub</a> as the foundation, we built a living, breathing Org Chart that updates in real-time.&nbsp;
It eliminates all the tedious work required and offers much more than the usual who's who. They&rsquo;re also a what, where, and why.
<h2>Why use a live Org Chart?&nbsp;</h2>
<h3>Better productivity levels</h3>
Org Charts put meaningful information about individuals behind the job titles &mdash; where people live, the time zones they are in, their skills, hobbies, and interests. But most importantly profiles are tied to the work that they are doing &mdash; the <a href="https://qatalog.com/projects/" rel="follow">Projects</a> they are leading or contributing to, and the <a href="https://qatalog.com/goals/" rel="follow">Goals</a> they are driving towards. Updates to profiles happen naturally, as the work itself happens.&nbsp;
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/q4VjJZqWTfCLhwSBxtKp" alt="undefined" width="675" height="456" />
This is key for collaboration and accountability, as 62% of workers <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/barriers-to-collaboration/" rel="follow">find it hard to figure out what others are working on</a>. With Qatalog, Org Charts provide visibility into the work of others and insight into how shared Projects are progressing, while Threads and Posts provide a visible place for the discussions that add context and drive them forward.&nbsp;
<h3>Promote operational efficiency</h3>
Traditional organizational charts show lines of authority, but not how that authority plays out. Qatalog Org Charts double-up as accountability charts when using the &ldquo;teams&rdquo; view.&nbsp;
Teams are functional groups that have distinct responsibilities and goals. Team Goals can be set and tracked from within Qatalog and key results assigned to contributors. With Qatalog you can also &ldquo;follow&rdquo; specific people, so their actions appear in your personalized, real-time feed.&nbsp;
The Team view can also house key resources and documents such as a team charter, annual roadmaps, and important policies or guidelines, so that <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/limited-visibility-at-work/" rel="follow">everyone has visibility on what their work is driving towards</a> and how to get there.&nbsp;
<h3>Help employees develop</h3>
For new joiners, especially those working in a remote or asynchronous environment, getting a dynamic view of the company and all the parts that put it together is transformative. We can&rsquo;t put it any better than one of our recent additions to the team:&nbsp;
&ldquo;What Qatalog was able to do for me, was to provide me with the information and context I needed to quickly understand what someone&rsquo;s name and role were, what team they are on, and to whom they report. But Qatalog also gave me insight into the projects they are involved in and work they&rsquo;ve done previously, which actually put meaning into their job title.&rdquo;&nbsp;
<h3>Provide a sense of belonging&nbsp;</h3>
Colleagues can also give and receive instant feedback via the Kudos button embedded into their profiles. These positive interactions communicate the value we see in contributions and are a great way to provide camaraderie.&nbsp;
For remote and hybrid workers, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/sense-of-belonging-at-work/" rel="follow">a shared Work Hub is where team unity and a sense of belonging are forged</a>.&nbsp;
<h3>You can create it almost instantly</h3>
That&rsquo;s the best part &mdash; Qatalog creates one for you. And you can download a PDF of it.
There&rsquo;s no need to spend hours tirelessly creating a doc to illustrate your company&rsquo;s hierarchy and each person&rsquo;s title.
Qatalog allows users full visibility across your entire organization, enabling them to easily see someone&rsquo;s title, what team they&rsquo;re in and what they&rsquo;re working on. What once would have been a complex process across many tools, is now easier than ever in one place.
Want to learn how Qatalog can make Org Charts simpler for your business? <a href="https://qatalog.com/contact/sales/" rel="follow">Get in touch here.</a>&nbsp;

With live org charts there’s no need to spend hours tirelessly creating a doc to illustrate your company’s hierarchy and each person’s title. Read more.

Transform a traditional org chart into a strategic tool | Qatalog

Org Charts are more than just a nice-to-have. They could be the key to enhancing efficiency within your company.

Transform a traditional organizational chart into a strategic business tool

It&rsquo;ll come as no surprise that the Qatalog team uses Qatalog all day long &mdash; it&rsquo;s rumored that Marta, our Chief of Staff also uses it in her sleep. So naturally, we all get very excited about updates to our workspaces.&nbsp;
We recently gave our UI a refresh, and safe to say, it&rsquo;s stunning. Not only is it visually appealing, but we&rsquo;ve also made it much easier to get started on Qatalog with guided setups. So, if you haven&rsquo;t seen our smooth, easy-on-the-eye design &mdash; we&rsquo;ve often been called the only GenZ/Millennial-friendly work solution out there &mdash; you&rsquo;re missing out.
<h3>Bug reporting and bug squashing</h3>
However, as with all larger-scale updates to software, bugs will inevitably crawl between the code. So before we let our customers share in our rapture for how much easier work gets with every new release across our Work Hub, we stress test everything internally, in a process dubbed dogfooding. It&rsquo;s become a sort of competition between us &ndash; who can find the most, the hardest to uncover, or the most critical to usability. And we wouldn&rsquo;t have a chance of getting any of this done without <a href="https://qatalog.com/workflows/" rel="follow">Qatalog&rsquo;s very own Workflow feature</a>. And yes, there are extra points if you <a href="http://app.qatalog.com/workflows/workflow/report-a-bug-to-qatalog">find a bug</a> in the bug reporting process.&nbsp;
The steps in our bug reporting Workflow record every critical piece of information our engineers need to locate the source. There are text fields for the description of actual behavior vs. expected behavior, drop downs for browser and hardware info, and additional upload fields for images or videos. Once the Workflow is completed, we immediately receive a notification in our #bugs Slack channel which allows for further discussion and additional visibility. Most importantly, the Workflow automatically creates a ticket for the relevant engineer using all the entered data. In short, the completion of one process in a Qatalog Workflow triggers the automatic completion of two other steps linked to our engineering tech stack, which most of the team don&rsquo;t have access to. This saves approximately 10 minutes of work per bug for an engineer but, above all, it puts a structured, consistent and scalable process in place that ensures we can priortize and trace bugs and keep shipping improvements to our customers&hellip;and to our Chief of staff. &nbsp;
<h3>Automating standard operational procedures&nbsp;</h3>
That&rsquo;s just one example of how <a href="https://qatalog.com/workflows/" rel="follow">Qatalog uses Workflows internally to save everybody time</a> while creating a higher-quality outcome. So if you don&rsquo;t have bugs to worry about, how else can Workflows help your business? In a nutshell, Workflows let you <a href="https://qatalog.com/use-case/process-management/" rel="follow">automate standard operational procedures</a>. They transform repeat tasks into a structured and simplified sequence, making it easy for crucial steps to be followed correctly, even by people unfamiliar with the process or completing it for the first time. The completion of one task triggers or even automates the start of another and the user only has to fill in the parts that are unique to the event, saving hours a week.&nbsp;
Internally, we rely on Workflows across people operations for quick weekly processes such as payroll updates, work with external accountants, or multilayered, monthly processes like <a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/hiring-process-steps/" rel="follow">hiring</a>, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/create-a-seamless-onboarding-experience/" rel="follow">onboarding</a>, or colleague feedback, to <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/raise-your-work-standards/" rel="follow">ensure consistency in execution every time</a>.&nbsp;
Our finance team uses Workflows to gather all requests to <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/workflow-collaboration-external-partners/" rel="follow">work with external consultants</a>, contractors, and companies in one place. Our sales team documents their daily standups or post-sales call actions using Workflows. Our customers have raved about their newfound ability to operationalize daily routines, cover critical Project steps, onboard clients, log requests to ops teams, or even create <a href="https://qatalog.com/use-case/knowledge-management/" rel="follow">internal resource centers</a> like intern reading assignments. No matter the team, there is a clear use case for setting up a Workflow and getting time back that would otherwise have been wasted searching through your tool stack or duplicating work.&nbsp;
If you&rsquo;re new to the world of process automation the good news is that you don&rsquo;t have to start from scratch. Our Workflows are now available to Qatalog users in the form of templates, such as daily stand-ups, new joiner onboarding, or hiring process templates.
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/f2bNjIKFRp2NSgCFMWox" alt="July-blog-post-workflows (1).png" width="800" height="450" />
And this most recent version of Qatalog brought further superpowers to Workflows.
Coordinated Workflows let you create things like team or project-specific processes that simplify alignment. Externally shared Workflows let you collaborate with teams outside your org. No more back and forth, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/client-collaboration-survey/" rel="follow">no more squinting at email threads</a> for information, just hours of time saved. And nested Workflows merge multiple processes into one, which makes complex tasks like the onboarding of a new employee manageable using only one primary Workflow. You can read more about how you can turn weeks of onboarding into an afternoon <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/create-a-seamless-onboarding-experience/" rel="follow">here</a>.&nbsp;
If you&rsquo;re starting to sense a pattern, it&rsquo;s because there is one &ndash; our Workflows give time back to people so they can spend it on the things that matter, rather than wasting it on mundane, repetitive work.&nbsp;
And it doesn&rsquo;t stop there. Our engineers have also added a multitude of new steps and outputs to improve functionality. Within a Workflow, it's now possible to create Asana or ClickUp tasks, Jira or Linear issues, Trello cards, or even automate the creation of new Dropbox or Google Drive folders and save files within them. In turn, these outputs can also be used to trigger further steps. As demonstrated with our bug reporting Workflow &ndash; the Shortcut ticket that is rendered after the Workflow is completed also generates and sends a Slack message to the Qatalog bugs channel. Qatalog not only integrates seamlessly with other work tools but acts as a <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-work-hub/" rel="follow">coordination layer</a> between them.
Long story short, with Qatalog you don&rsquo;t need to be an engineer to set up automated company processes. <a href="https://qatalog.com/signup/" rel="follow">Start here!</a>

You don’t need to be an engineer to create standardized company processes. Read how to get started with no-code Workflows.

Standardize company processes | Qatalog

You don’t need to be an engineer to create standardized company processes

<h3>What is an OKR?</h3>
The acronym OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results, and by definition, it is a data-driven, collaborative goal-setting framework. The Objectives &ndash; Business goals, team goals, or individual goals &ndash;&nbsp; are set first. Then they&rsquo;re broken down into actionable steps supported by desired metrics &ndash; these stepping stones are called &ldquo;Key Results''.
Objectives are ambitious, inspirational, and let&rsquo;s be honest, a little intimidating. Key results are smaller and more tangible. We&rsquo;ve probably met them before and know how to work towards them.&nbsp;
<h3>Got it. But how do I start?&nbsp;</h3>
We use the formula: OKR = [Objective] + [2-4 x Key Results]. You can head to our <a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/okr-examples/">OKR template page</a> for some inspiration on how to start filling in these blanks.&nbsp;
A good rule of thumb is that if your key results are actions, such as &ldquo;publish blog articles frequently&rdquo;, they&rsquo;re not going to work. Results, or outcomes, are never vague &mdash; you either accomplish them or you don't. Including targets, such as &ldquo;publish 2 blog articles every 10 days&rdquo; in your key results will set you in the right direction.&nbsp;
Like most work, OKRs are most effective when they are connected to the work of others. Transparency is key to collaboration and setting OKRs in an accessible way, fostering cross-department input will help you reach them.&nbsp;
OKRs only work if you regularly check in on them. Keeping an eye on them means you can coordinate priorities and catch problems as they are unfolding rather than come crunch time. We&rsquo;re also more motivated when we know what our work is driving towards or what higher purpose the results we are chasing serve. It&rsquo;s also easier to recognize if a team is due a well-deserved Kudos after achieving a key result.
Read more about <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-write-okrs/" rel="follow">how to set OKRs</a> or why they are <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/goal-setting-for-distributed-teams/">essential for distributed teams</a> in our dedicated blog posts.&nbsp;
<h3>So how can Qatalog help with OKRs?</h3>
Managing Goals can be a headache, especially when it&rsquo;s done in a spreadsheet. How do you know when it&rsquo;s updated? Who&rsquo;s meant to update it? What team is tracking what? Where is the spreadsheet saved? The headache goes on&hellip; And then, when considering switching to a goal-tracking tool, switching costs and set-up times need to be considered.
What's more, goal tracking tools often sit separately from the rest of your work and require upfront work to ensure every team uses the same structure for setting and tracking goals. Unlike other tools, Qatalog&rsquo;s Goal feature is a ready-to-use OKR framework that&rsquo;s structured, visible, and linked to other parts of work like People, Teams, and Projects. This makes it easy for everyone to stay on the same page and ensures consistency in measuring and tracking across teams.
<h3>Transfer your existing goals in minutes</h3>
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/eJ4956qGRgKYQhT1skMd" alt="Bespoke-headers-bulk create.png" width="619" height="395" />
Bulk adding your goals, like quarterly OKRs, into Qatalog is simple. You can add multiple goals using the Bulk Create feature, which provides an OKR framework where you can add numerous Objectives and Key Results, and assign them to different people and teams across your org. You can also control what updates you receive when a goal is updated, making it easier to stay aligned.
<h3>Learn more and keep up to date on everything Qatalog</h3>
For a detailed rundown of how to use Bulk Create check out our <a href="https://help.qatalog.com/hc/en-us/articles/4423986506765">help article</a>.
If you want more updates on all things Qatalog, you can <a href="https://qatalog.com/newsletter/">subscribe to our monthly newsletter</a> and keep up with our <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/">blog</a>. Or <a href="https://qatalog.chilipiper.com/book/oezejo" rel="follow">book a call</a> with our friendly team!

Want to effectively align on goals with your team? Tired of using spreadsheets? Learn how to plan and bulk-create OKRs using Qatalog.

Goal alignment and OKR planning | Qatalog

OKRs demystified and how bulk-adding your goals into Qatalog can save you time and uplevel your team collaboration.

Goal alignment and OKR planning made easy with Qatalog

The phenomenon of Zoom fatigue is real. It was real when everyone shifted to working from home, and it's just as real now as we graduate to the in-between of hybrid, remote, and in-person.&nbsp;
A strange new reality has surfaced where employees are having video conferencing while working with others in person. And those who were excited about <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/27/return-to-work-in-person-hybrid/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">returning to office camaraderie</a> have been met with a very different experience than they're used to. Among still present COVID-19 concerns, companies are encouraging their employees to hold video calls with their colleagues that occupy the same office. For example, three people on the same call could be in three different conference rooms.&nbsp;
Most of our work time is still being spent in isolation, whether we're in the office or not.&nbsp;
This new situation is just one of the many frustrations that have arisen with the ongoing use of video conferencing. We are all feeling varying levels of exhaustion and burnout from looking at our coworkers, and ourselves, through a screen. <a href="https://news.stanford.edu/2021/02/23/four-causes-zoom-fatigue-solutions/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Stanford researchers</a> back up this sense of Zoom fatigue and offer four possible explanations for it:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Eye contact: There is an excessive amount of highly intense eye contact on Zoom calls because everyone is looking at everyone else, whether they are speaking or not, for the <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/meetings-for-remote-teams/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">entire duration of the meeting.</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Seeing yourself: We don&rsquo;t look at ourselves in the mirror during in-person meetings, so it feels unnatural to see that little square profile while Zooming. We may become critical of ourselves and experience heightened self-consciousness.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Reduced mobility: Movement is limited when we are on-screen, and we don't have to walk to a new conference room for our next meeting.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Higher cognitive load: We have to work harder at nonverbal communication on Zoom calls.</li>
</ul>
Video conferencing is still a great tool and has been a work-saver during the pandemic. It has allowed us to leverage virtual interactions to form connections, collaborate, and accelerate productivity. But it doesn&rsquo;t ease the <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-run-effective-meetings/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">challenge of meetings</a> and adds its own set of frustrations.&nbsp;
<h2>What apps are doing to our productivity</h2>
<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">App fatigue</a> is not limited to only video conferencing. Many of our existing tools are improving the way we work in certain areas, but not aligning our teams or providing the connectivity layer distributed teams need.&nbsp;
As a result, our brains are working harder to make up for all the lost context. There have been plenty of studies about productivity levels and working from home, but in this <a href="https://bfi.uchicago.edu/working-paper/2021-56/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">University of Chicago study</a>, productivity decreased while working hours increased. It cited that more people were spending time on coordinating activities, decreasing <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/tools-that-unlock-creativity/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">focus and deep work time.</a>
In Qatalog&rsquo;s <a href="https://assets.qatalog.com/language.work/qatalog-2021-workgeist-report.pdf">Workgeist Report</a>, people reported having to interrupt at least two people to find what they need up to five times a day. Even with tools designed to find what we need, 54% of people say that applications can sometimes make it harder to find information. 
<h2>A solution to app fatigue</h2>
Earlier this year, Zoom&rsquo;s CEO <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2021/09/13/zoom-ceo-eric-yuan-new-hybrid-office-tools/?sh=3fe3b2e75168" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Eric Yuan</a> claimed he was suffering from his own case of Zoom fatigue after having 19 consecutive meetings.
So, the next time you&rsquo;re dreading a day of never-ending Zoom calls, take a page from Yuan&rsquo;s playbook and don&rsquo;t schedule back-to-back meetings. Leave yourself time in between to revive, recap, and reset. One actionable tip we've seen (and implemented at Qatalog) is having at least one "No Meeting Day" a week.&nbsp;
For your other app-related work fatigue, minimize the time spent searching, scouring, and pinging by adopting a work hub. If you use Asana for project management and Google Drive for file creation, integrate both into Qatalog to bring them both into context. Information should be accessible, and once it is, you can bring structure back into your day-to-day.

Zoom fatigue. We've all had it at this point. But Zoom is far from the only tool that is leaving us exhausted and burnt-out.

Tool exhaustion doesn’t stop with Zoom fatigue

It&rsquo;s easy to rely on Slack as your only personable tether to your coworkers. But amidst the GIFs and weekend catch-ups, there&rsquo;s actual work and files getting thrown back and forth in different DMs and threads.
In 2016, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-better-than-slack-these-companies-have-some-ideas-11615118401" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">remote-friendly Doist quit using Slack</a> and opted for an internal message board. CEO Amir Salihefendic cited the instant messaging platform&rsquo;s addictive qualities, the inability to conduct in-depth conversations, and general disorganization as the determining factors for finding a more async-friendly alternative.&nbsp;
Doist is a great company to look at for being ahead of the curve in many aspects. For one, author Cal Newport&rsquo;s notion of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/podcasts/ezra-klein-podcast-cal-newport-transcript.html" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">&ldquo;hyperactive hive mind&rdquo;</a> is catalyzed by constant pings, switching apps, and instant messaging adrenaline &mdash; part of what Doist was looking to find a solution for almost five years ago.&nbsp;
Most of the communication and collaboration issues that plague today&rsquo;s workers existed years ago, and Doist is great proof of that. Now that we&rsquo;re all experiencing more remote-friendly models, these massive gaps in our working habits are becoming rapidly apparent.&nbsp;
<h3>Slack is just one example of app chaos</h3>
Slack launched in 2009. Asana was founded in 2008, and Zoom came in 2011. The productivity and messaging tools most of us are familiar with have populated the market for upwards of ten years.&nbsp;
And whether or not they were founded on the promise of solving for increasing hybrid work needs, that&rsquo;s exactly what they&rsquo;ve been adopted for. For the most part, these tools serve their purpose. They deliver a fantastic user experience for the specific use case they were designed for.&nbsp;
But these days, knowledge workers need tools that work together. They need a solution that doesn&rsquo;t dredge up five more problems when trying to find them. The amount of tools we have now lends a great metaphor for the number of papers I imagine messy desk drawers had before computers were invented.&nbsp;
<h2>The delayed gratification of async work</h2>
Slack isn&rsquo;t productivity&rsquo;s biggest enemy, but the correlation between instant messaging and gratification doesn&rsquo;t mix well with async or remote-friendly working models. A majority of asynchronous communication works because it allows people to get things done in their own time frame, and sometimes in their own time zones. Because of this, there is limited instant validation or gratification.
We&rsquo;ve developed tool fatigue for a lot of reasons. Perhaps one of the most logical reasons is because in our search to find the best applications to speed up/make work more productive, we became more and more used to a wall of notifications and instant gratification.
And I know I&rsquo;m not the only one to continuously shift through tabs or tools to search for comments or feedback. Employees are digging through cloud storage systems, scouring message channels and cycling through tabs, <a href="https://language.work/study/" rel="follow">wasting around </a><a href="https://language.work/study/" rel="follow">59 minutes</a><a href="https://language.work/study/" rel="follow"> per day</a>.
<a href="http://www.language.work/study?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=productivity-tools&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow"><img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/BueJevZDTo27dupf3dkg" alt="undefined" /></a>
New research from Qatalog and Cornell University shows that productivity tools are actually killing productivity. Human brains were not wired for a working day of glancing between instant messaging, various documents, project management platforms, and more. <a href="https://language.work/study/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">45% say this makes them less productive</a> and 43% say it is tiring to regularly switch between tools and communications channels. &nbsp;
In order to be a people-first hybrid or remote company, your organization and employees have to improve their async literacy. What does this mean exactly? It means prioritizing the procedures that help your teams to collaborate confidently and communicate effectively. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-lead-distributed-teams/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=productivity-tools&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener">Improving discoverability and transparency</a> within your company directly <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/get-hybrid-in-order/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=productivity-tools&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener">impacts your async literacy,</a> because it puts the power in the hands of employees rather than gatekeeping the information they need.&nbsp;
<h3>Knowledge sharing has never been easy</h3>
54% of people say that applications can make it harder to find information. One in two employees says they&rsquo;re not always certain the information and updates they&rsquo;re posting within their company's apps are reaching their intended audience.
In the age of the knowledge worker, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/limited-visibility-at-work/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=productivity-tools&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener">sharing information should be organized and specific</a>. Because of our tool portfolios, it&rsquo;s anything but. Accessibility ranges between teams and seniority levels. Having too many apps actually restricts our access to knowledge rather than opening information up to the entire company. What was once an array of tools that opened the working world to the possibility of remote and distributed workers has spiraled into unnecessary friction for employees.&nbsp;
<h3>Clean up your app landscape</h3>
Doist turned to an internal messaging board. Your company could do the same thing, but then you may run into the crux of having yet another solution that solves a singular problem. That&rsquo;s why many companies are shifting to a work hub so they have a connectivity layer for their maze of tools, people, and work. 
This new way of working can allow teams to rise above the instant gratification of the hyperactive hive mind and graduate to a more satisfying level of performance. One where team members are aligned, engaged, and have space for deep work &mdash; and where order trumps chaos.&nbsp;

In the age of the knowledge worker, sharing information should be organized and specific.

Productivity apps are killing productivity | Qatalog

In order to be a people-first hybrid or remote company, your organization and employees have to improve their async literacy.

Are productivity apps killing productivity?

Keeping track of work has always been difficult. Are your employees meeting or extending deadlines? Are they showing initiative with new projects? Performance management software offers ways to stay tuned in to team performance &mdash; even when people aren&rsquo;t occupying the same physical space.
Employee performance evaluations and goal tracking platforms help keep everyone aligned across teams. Making these evaluations discoverable within your organization helps move productivity along and gives you credit where it&rsquo;s due. The goal of performance management software is to accomplish all of this in one step.
<h3>What is employee performance management software?</h3>
Performance management tools help answer the question: how are my employees performing?
There are a few different use cases for performance management. Goal tracking platforms and team alignment tools (including <a href="https://lattice.com/">Lattice</a> and <a href="https://gtmhub.com/">Gtmhub</a>) assist with performance reviews and goal-tracking. Performance management could also include sales quota or competency-based measurement systems.&nbsp;
<h2>Best performance management software in 2021</h2>
<h3>1. Lattice</h3>
Lattice describes itself as a people management software built for making performance reviews easy and people-focused. Using Lattice, People teams can make reviews accessible, facilitate 1:1s, and analyze insights that help to develop a high-performing workforce.
<h3>2. Gtmhub</h3>
Gtmhub follows the OKR framework and helps provide clarity and specific direction based on those goals. It&rsquo;s a goal-tracking platform that makes progress and outcomes available to everyone in your organization.
<h3>3. 15Five&nbsp;</h3>
15Five tracks employee engagement through multiple products, including OKR tracking, engagement surveys, and performance reviews. Their Align product is an alternative to Gtmhub, and Perform aligns with Lattice&rsquo;s feedback and employee recognition offerings.&nbsp;
<h3>4. BambooHR</h3>
BambooHR was built so People teams can focus on the good stuff. It handles all your typical HR tasks like employee records, hiring and onboarding processes, and time tracking in addition to performance management.
<h2>Benefits of performance management tools</h2>
The market for performance management software is <a href="https://www.clearreview.com/performance-management-software-industry/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">expected to double</a> in the next five years. People and ops teams are clearly loving these tools because they:&nbsp;
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Increase motivation &mdash; Performance management tools provide transparency to what everyone is doing and their successes.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Help retention &mdash; Employees are more likely to stay at a company if they feel they are fairly recognized and praised for their efforts.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Highlight onboarding or management gaps &mdash; Performance management tools can be an open forum. Frequent reviews with employees of every level ensure that everyone from new employees to team leaders is up to speed with skills and competencies.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Encourage employee autonomy &mdash; With a performance management tool, employees can see what everyone else is doing and choose how they prioritize their responsibilities.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<h2>Where employee performance management software meets its limits</h2>
These days, there are productivity apps for <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/collaboration-software-vs-work-hub/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=work-hub-performance&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">communication</a>, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/workplace-search-tools-vs-work-hub/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=work-hub-performance&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">document storage</a>, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-project-management-asana-trello-jira/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=work-hub-performance&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">project management</a>, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-company-wiki-notion-confluence/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=work-hub-performance&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">wikis</a>, process automation, and goal tracking.
In this context, teams find various tools too much to manage, as they hop between apps constantly. In our research, 42% of software companies said there too many tools to work with. <a href="https://qatalog.com/remote-work-report/">61% of people</a>say different teams using various apps and tools create silos within organizations.&nbsp;
Many teams we spoke to mentioned goal setting was still done on Google Sheets, outside of performance management tools. Imagine manually setting up, tracking, and updating goals on multiple sheets for multiple teams &mdash; the perfect scenario to build silos.
Introducing more team alignment and performance management tools into the mix only adds more clutter to the workplace. Meanwhile, it doesn&rsquo;t help productivity have a goal tracker separate from where the actual work happens. Switching windows to update a goal may only take a minute, but it interrupts focus, disrupts workflow, and adds an extra task.
Ironically, when it&rsquo;s siloed from the rest of your work, goal tracking may make tracking goals trickier. This is because it&rsquo;s hard to spot cross-functional dependencies, and tracing objectives up and down the organization becomes impossible.
Performance management software becomes more of a burden when this happens &mdash; far from a people or HR team&rsquo;s dream scenario. Operational team leaders rarely have incentives to use them, while engineers, designers, and growth marketers on the broader team are busy juggling across their complex online workplace. For teams to be working off them, goals need to be put into the proper context of people, groups, and projects.
<h2>Benefits of a connected work hub</h2>
Of the 100+ software companies we spoke to, a third complained about <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-business-process-management-software/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=work-hub-performance&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">manually updating</a> performance management tools. Many of these tools are managed by people and ops teams, making it difficult for other teams to reap the benefits these tools bring.&nbsp;
Theoretically, goal trackers should make it easier to manage team performance. Yet, with duplicated information, multiple dashboards, and manual updating &mdash; they might slow down team performance, preventing the organization from reaching its objectives.
<img src="https://cdn.buttercms.com/qCbHOqhTDarxWqyllMcz" alt="Qatalog product wireframe" />
<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-digital-workspace/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=work-hub-performance&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">A platform that naturally blends goals and performance trackers</a> into the context where work happens regardless of location would be a good fix. This is why using a work hub for performance management can be so effective.
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A work hub is connected to everything. Everything you need to set goals, track them, and relate them to specific work entities sits together in a shared space. In a work hub, goals take their proper place alongside projects, teams, and people.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Adopting a work hub can increase accountability and transparency. Using a work hub to connect your teams remotely means that goals can be cascaded (and updated) automatically throughout all levels of the organization.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A work hub saves time. Updating various tools within each team takes time and can lead to silos.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>
<h2>Why you need a work hub instead of corporate performance management software&nbsp;</h2>
With a work hub, your teams don&rsquo;t need to keep switching windows to update goals or keep track of KPIs. People and ops teams can free up countless hours and substantial IT budget with a work hub &mdash; time and money better spent on growing the team.
In one central interface,<a href="https://qatalog.com/?utm_medium=organic-content&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=series-3-footer-cta&amp;utm_content=qatalog-vs-goal-tracking"> </a>a work hub intertwines goals with their connected people and projects and keeps them updated. This way your specialists can do what they do best: develop the product, power growth, and help customers get value.&nbsp;

Performance management software helps keep track of goals and employee performance. Make it easier with Qatalog’s work hub.

Work hub vs. performance management software | Qatalog

The pros and cons of performance management software, and why you need a work hub instead.

Should I invest in performance management software for my hybrid team?

Think about the last time you didn&rsquo;t know who to go to for a question. Maybe it was something simple or a detailed process question only one person could answer. Perhaps you had to go through multiple channels to find your answer, which took way more time than finding the solution to your problem.&nbsp;
Gaps in communication and knowledge-sharing are quickly exposed within a remote setting. Most teams resort to endless Slack messages or emails to find information that should be common knowledge.&nbsp;
These are problems an employee directory could fix.
<h3>What is an employee directory?</h3>
An employee directory allows you to look up the names, contact information, and roles of the people within your organization. An employee directory should connect your staff and answer initial questions of who they are and what they do. Typically, the search functions of a directory stop there.
<h2>Why most static employee directories just don&rsquo;t cut it</h2>
When you start an office-based job, you meet everyone on your team during the first few days in meetings, at lunch, or simply by starting a conversation in an open-plan environment.
In a remote or hybrid setting, things are different. You need to be intentional about onboarding and relationship-building.
When you build your employee directory, you&rsquo;ll have a central hub where anyone can <a href="https://qatalog.com/search/" rel="follow noopener">find information</a> about their colleagues. It&rsquo;ll act as a virtual water cooler for your distributed team. People can head to the directory to see what others are <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-digital-workspace/" rel="follow noopener">working on</a>, where they&rsquo;re located, maybe even a small bio about themselves. Unfortunately, most employee directories like these end up being an afterthought. It&rsquo;ll be a spreadsheet buried in your Box or Google Drive, updated once or twice per year <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/work-hub-vs-performance-management-software/" rel="follow noopener">by management or HR</a>.
<a href="https://qatalog.com/templates/employee-profile/" rel="follow">&rarr; See how you can craft an employee profile with Qatalog.</a>
<h2>Common issues that arise with employee directories</h2>
<h3>Directories are detached from day-to-day projects</h3>
Organizations often host their employee directories on a standalone platform in their team&rsquo;s toolset. You might use a specific employee directory, while some still use a spreadsheet.
The problem? It&rsquo;s disconnected from everything else in the company.
But consider this: if your team doesn&rsquo;t know what everyone is spending their time on, or who&rsquo;s working on what, they&rsquo;ll be emailing or messaging multiple people whenever they need a specific piece of information. Over a whole week, that adds up quickly.
<h3>Employee directories are only useful for HR or upper management</h3>
Over time, an employee directory might evolve into a large unwieldy spreadsheet, managed by HR. And there&rsquo;s no reason for anyone to refer to this list unless management needs to check boring details like someone&rsquo;s current address or salary.
On the other hand, if your employee directory contains personal information, like people&rsquo;s interests and hobbies, it becomes somewhere your team wants to check.
Your directory will act as a bridge between distributed teams, helping them build closer relationships with their colleagues. It&rsquo;ll serve as a way to start casual conversations that remote teams often miss.
<h2>Benefits of a work hub vs. a stand-alone employee directory</h2>
<h3>1. A work hub adds context </h3>
If you have the ability to see that someone is working on a big project due in the next few days, they may not be the best person to ping about a trivial question.
One significant benefit of a work hub is that it adds context to your employee directory. By connecting with apps (think Asana, Dropbox, GitLab, and Teams) a glance at your directory will show you precisely what projects everyone is working on.
<h3>2. Work hubs foster connectivity</h3>
Without regular in-person lunches or coffee breaks, it can be hard to cultivate good relationships within a distributed team. Without intentional team-building, everyone can be familiar with who everyone is, yet no one really knows each other.
The benefits of having a connected team are far-reaching Companies that focus on culture have team members that are <a href="https://www.atlassian.com/blog/teamwork/the-importance-of-teamwork" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">80% more likely</a> to report higher emotional well-being. Encouraging strong interpersonal relationships contributes to building a culture of togetherness and connectivity. 
By building your employee directory in a work hub, everyone can share extra information about themselves and what they&rsquo;re up to. Knowing that a team member shares your similar interests, or is binge-watching a show you also love, can be the start to conversations that would otherwise never happen.
<h3>3. Work hubs improve visibility and information sharing</h3>
The average mid-market company <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/lost-in-the-jungle-of-workspace-apps-2020/">uses 185 apps</a> to manage their work. You can connect them all with a work hub.&nbsp;
Instead of turning to Slack to alert your manager of a completed task, a work hub automates that process for you &mdash; providing real-time activity notifications of what people are working on. Need to find a deck that you made months ago for a paused project? Search all your apps at once &mdash; without having to flip through different tabs.&nbsp;
If anyone needs information about a team member or project, it&rsquo;s only a few clicks away.
<h2>Recap: Use a work hub as your connected employee directory</h2>
Keep everyone connected and more aligned with a work hub. It&rsquo;s the ideal solution to your employee directory needs, for a few reasons:
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A work hub connects your directory with every app your team uses.<a href="https://qatalog.com/company-section/" rel="follow"> Make your directory work in sync with every other tool you use</a>. It&rsquo;ll be more actionable and will become a useful asset to everyone at the company.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">It boosts rapport on distributed teams. Building strong teams is hard if you&rsquo;re not in the same office. With a work hub, your team can quickly check the directory and learn all about their colleagues to find people with similar interests and hobbies.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A work hub provides visibility into everyone&rsquo;s work. A glance at your directory will give you clarity into every individual&rsquo;s priority projects, tasks, and goals for the week, month, quarter, or year.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A work hub improves cross-department collaboration and adoption. A work hub acts as a single place to <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/collaboration-software-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener">connect everything</a> your team is working on. If you create new standardized processes, you can quickly ensure everyone relevant knows about them.</li>
</ol>

Employee directories can point you to the people of your organization but aren't connected with your projects and purpose. A work hub is.

Employee Directory vs Work Hub | Qatalog

Find out why you need an employee directory, common problems with them, and whether your remote or hybrid team needs an employee directory or a connected work hub.

Why a work hub beats out the functionalities of a static employee directory

Work communication and collaboration will always be a challenge &mdash; no matter what tools you decide to use. There will be moments you need information as soon as possible and times that you don&rsquo;t mind waiting hours for a reply.
Differentiating and balancing between the two can be a significant pain point for distributed teams.&nbsp;
How do you create a system that allows your team to balance between asynchronous and synchronous communication?
Let&rsquo;s start by defining these two communication types.&nbsp;
Synchronous communication happens in real-time, usually over Zoom, Teams, Slack, or email.&nbsp;
Asynchronous communication happens using tools like Google Docs, Asana, and Dropbox. These are the less immediate forms of communication that allow you to take a step back from the constant wall of notifications.&nbsp;
Rather than relying on one communication style or the other, more and more companies are moving to a model that combines the two. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurelfarrer/2020/12/10/the-art-of-asynchronous-optimizing-efficiency-in-remote-teams/?sh=c7473b9747c1" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Blending both</a> collaboration styles is the ideal way to ensure your team always has the information they need whenever they need it. You just need to find a software that makes room for both.
<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-digital-dexterity/" rel="follow">&rarr; Learn how to develop digital dexterity in your organization</a>
<h2>Understanding effective remote collaboration</h2>
The best place to start understanding your team&rsquo;s communication needs is by reviewing your collaboration tech stack to ensure every app you use fits with how you envision workplace collaboration, whether it&rsquo;s asynchronous or synchronous.
<h3>Should asynchronous communication be the default?</h3>
Asynchronous communication is rising in popularity. It enables teams to grow across borders and time zones without worrying about people not being online at specific times of the day.&nbsp;
The key benefit of asynchronous communication tools is that they allow teams to collaborate without being in the same time zone. It also pushes team members to document everything they do and ensure essential information is readily available for team members and not just stored in their heads.
<h2>Everyday use cases for asynchronous collaboration and recommended tools</h2>
A completely asynchronous company would be a challenge. There will always be specific tasks you can&rsquo;t do entirely asynchronously, such as 1:1s, candidate interviews, or real-time collaboration in the early stages of designing a new feature.
Several ways to use asynchronous collaboration include:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Allow access to files and company documentation using tools like <a href="https://docs.google.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Google Docs</a>, <a href="https://www.notion.so/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Notion</a>, or <a href="https://dropbox.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Dropbox</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Give the team clarity into tasks and projects with <a href="https://asana.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Asana</a> or <a href="https://trello.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Trello</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Build standard workflows and processes Creating a team directory and bring everything together using a <a href="https://qatalog.com/company-section/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">work hub</a></li>
</ul>
Your asynchronous tools should allow team members to find critical resources as and when they need them, without relying on messaging or emailing another team member.
<h2>Synchronous collaboration still has a place in remote teams</h2>
Synchronous collaboration tools are just as crucial as asynchronous tools in a fast-growing company. For example, if you urgently need information from a colleague, you&rsquo;ll need to get in touch with them quickly.&nbsp;
Real-time feedback and interaction can help you quickly iterate on ideas, provide fast feedback, and build relationships with your team. These are the core benefits.&nbsp;
<h2>Use cases for synchronous communication and tools to help</h2>
When asynchronous doesn&rsquo;t cut it, you need to collaborate in real-time to get the results you need. Here are a few use cases for synchronous collaboration:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Make meetings more effective with whiteboards like <a href="https://miro.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Miro</a> and <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/jim-kalbach-mural-interview/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=blog&amp;utm_campaign=collaboration-software&amp;utm_content=post" rel="follow">MURAL</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Improve social interactions with team get-togethers on <a href="https://zoom.us/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Zoom</a> or <a href="https://whereby.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Whereby</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Hold efficient retrospective meetings with <a href="https://www.parabol.co/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Parabol</a></li>
</ul>
With this many communication tools, ensuring nothing gets lost can be a huge hurdle. Did you leave your last note on a project in a Google Doc, or did you send a Slack in the #product channel?&nbsp;
Luckily, there&rsquo;s a simple way to bring together all of your communication across all of your tools.
<h2>How a Work Hub facilitates remote collaboration</h2>
Instead of adding more tools to hold your company together at the seams, a work hub brings your existing tools together, giving you more visibility into what&rsquo;s really happening in your team.
<a href="https://qatalog.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Work Hubs</a> give your remote team a central place to stay up-to-date on projects, tasks, and tools.
<ol>
<li aria-level="1">A Work Hub provides clarity into every project. No need to send Slack or Teams messages every time you need an update. A work hub syncs all of your tools so you can instantly see what other team members have done in the projects you&rsquo;re involved in and <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/limited-visibility-at-work/" rel="follow">keep every project visible</a>.</li>
<li aria-level="1">A Work Hub allows more time for deep work. Instead of being disrupted continuously, your team can stay focused on tasks that matter &mdash; asynchronous becomes the default because information is always synced and current.</li>
<li aria-level="1">It brings teams together. Every department can instantly see what other people are working on through dynamic Org Charts. Find recent activity, important projects and goals through searchable, detailed people and team profiles.</li>
<li aria-level="1">You can find the information you need across any tool. Instead of jumping from Jira to Slack to Github just to find one snippet of information, search in a work hub lets you scroll through files across any tool you use. You can surface information within seconds, allowing everyone to work effectively, even when you&rsquo;re not in a meeting.</li>
<li aria-level="1">A Work Hub makes your current tools speak to one another. Rather than always searching for the next tool to level up your collaboration, a work hub brings the best out of your existing tools.</li>
</ol>
Whatever the makeup of your toolkit may be, a balance of asynchronous and synchronous communication across them will help keep your distributed team aligned, connected, and productive.&nbsp;

Collaboration software helps remote and distributed teams communicate, but work hubs bring teams together across these different tools.

Collaboration software vs work hubs | Qatalog

The best place to start understanding your team’s communication needs is by reviewing your collaboration tech stack.

How to determine the best collaboration software for distributed teams

Now that distributed teams are spread across different contexts, time zones, and languages, employees are turning to new digital tools and apps to communicate, collaborate, and align.&nbsp;
These tools were built to boost efficiency, but have ended up bringing greater complexity and chaos to our digital workspace. According to <a href="https://www.okta.com/businesses-at-work/2020/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">one 2020 study</a>, the average company is now using 88 different apps. Qatalog&rsquo;s research found that 60% of tech companies struggle to gain visibility into colleagues&rsquo; work. And when sales loses sight of what the product team is up to, workflows get jammed &mdash; and frustration builds.
Work doesn&rsquo;t have to be this way. In a digital workspace, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">all of your teams, projects, and tools can come together</a>.&nbsp;
<h2>What is a digital workspace?</h2>
Once upon a time, your digital workspace strategy was simply the envisioned complement to the physical workplace &mdash; the aggregate of disparate means for digital collaboration. These days, virtual workspaces are specific platforms, built to bring distributed teams together with all the tools they need to be productive.
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A digital workspace brings all your tools and processes together. This virtual environment is where your <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-project-management-asana-trello-jira/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">teams collaborate and communicate,</a> alongside (and within) the tools, resources, and processes that everyone needs. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A digital workspace allows for an asynchronous environment across time zones, devices, and distance. Distributed teams aren&rsquo;t always available at the same time. A digital workspace is a shared environment that allows them to stay up-to-date and on-track whenever convenient for them. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">It&rsquo;s where you do your work. A virtual workspace isn&rsquo;t just your collection of tools. It&rsquo;s where you do your work, too. It&rsquo;s your window into goals, workflows, posts, projects, and people.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Why your team needs a digital workspace</h2>
Having a digital space for teams to collaborate matters. Why? Across apps, tools, and channels, it is the only way to eliminate workplace chaos.&nbsp;
According to Gartner's Cool Vendor Report, &ldquo;remote and hybrid work amplify challenges in coordinating teams as the needs for flexibility around time, place and technology affect everyone.&rdquo;
Here&rsquo;s how a virtual workspace can change your digital operations:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Time well spent. <a href="https://www.ringcentral.com/lp/future-digital-workplace.html" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">A 2018 study</a> found most team members spend an hour a day flicking between apps. In the span of a year, that&rsquo;s about a month of lost work. A digital workplace is integrated, clear, and searchable &mdash; <a href="https://qatalog.com/gartner-cool-vendor-2021/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">so you can spend time on more productive things.</a></li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Greater alignment, greater visibility. When each team has its preferred tool, cross-functional visibility suffers. Marketing loses sight of product design and workflows stall. Effective digital workplaces can integrate Asana with Jira and Slack, for example.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Truly collaborative. Across distances, catching up by the water cooler isn&rsquo;t an option. In an optimized virtual workspace, the status of processes and progress is visible to all. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/collaboration-software-vs-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">This means everyone is already up to speed</a> &mdash; making collaboration actually collaborative from the get-go.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Boost team bliss. An efficient workplace is a happy one. When teams can&rsquo;t find their way among the chaos, frustration builds. Virtual workspaces provide clarity.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Virtual workspaces are changing</h2>
If you had asked about digital and <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/new-way-of-work/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">virtual workspaces</a> 10 years ago, someone may have pointed to Microsoft or Google. Today, there are solutions that allow a company of any size to connect their many workspaces and applications into one, integrated work hub.&nbsp;
Here are some other changes we&rsquo;ve seen within the space:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Heavy-weight enterprise solutions are no longer the only option. New virtual workspaces don&rsquo;t need a dedicated IT team to manage permissions and administrate updates and sign-ins. For teams to be light on their feet, your workspace needs to be, too. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Digital workplaces are much more agile &mdash; and now they&rsquo;re bottom-up. With organizations more decentralized than ever, tech spend is entrusted to teams who need it. A new digital workplace gives teams full control of the apps they use without forcing them into one top-down framework that nobody wants. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">App developers are waking up to what teams need. In the new generation of <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-become-a-fully-remote-high-performance-team/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">digital workplaces</a>, functionality and flexibility are central. Say goodbye to unnecessary features that add chaos to your work.</li>
</ul>
<h2>A work hub is a connected digital workspace solution</h2>
A work hub brings together everything and everyone you work with to add context and perspective to the tasks you are doing, the projects you&rsquo;re managing, and the goals you&rsquo;re striving to meet.&nbsp;
But what gives a work hub the edge over other digital workplace solutions?&nbsp;
For starters, it&rsquo;s quick, clean, and <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/why-we-built-qatalog/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">built for the diversity of modern work:</a>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Clean and simple user interface. A work hub has all the capabilities of heavy-duty enterprise workplaces, without sacrificing usability.&nbsp; The user interface is designed for effortless experiences, creating a clean and distraction-free online space.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Essential functionality. A work hub keeps things simple. You can customize your space to integrate the tools and projects your teams need without adding unnecessary noise.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Absolute flexibility. Integration with popular apps is as simple as a single click. When two teams use two different tools, this kind of flexibility is vital. Individuals can choose the tools they need to do their work &mdash; and a work hub brings them together in a single organizational space.</li>
</ul>
A work hub makes your work make sense. Lightweight, agile, and with streamlined functionality and clarity of design &mdash; it delivers the best of a digital workspace, without the need for an expensive or tech-heavy solution.

A digital workspace brings all your tools and processes together and gives you a place to do your work virtually.

What is a digital workspace | Qatalog blog

What is a digital workspace?

Work about work takes up 60% of the average knowledge worker&rsquo;s time, <a href="https://asana.com/resources/anatomy-of-work" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">according to one Asana study</a>
Let&rsquo;s break that down. More than half of the time you spend at work isn&rsquo;t necessarily creating a clear output. And in a world where remote work is now commonplace, collaboration and resource-sharing tools are supposed to help solve this problem.&nbsp;
Enter intranets, which became popular in the 1990s and are the traditional solution for providing centralized access to information and apps. There are pros and cons to implementing an intranet, which we&rsquo;ll go over in this post. But the first thing you should know about intranets is that they are a two-decades-old solution that hasn&rsquo;t yet evolved to tackle modern business challenges.&nbsp;
<h2>What&rsquo;s an intranet?</h2>
An intranet is a private network that enables collaboration and resource sharing within an organization.&nbsp;
Ideally, an intranet solution will provide employees with a central and authoritative source for all the tools and information relevant to their work.&nbsp;
While it&rsquo;s possible to build an intranet from the ground up, in most cases organizations will use a product like Microsoft SharePoint, Jive, or LumApps to create their intranet. Regardless of the software used, an intranet is the content management system (CMS) that provides people access to resources like:
<ul>
<li>Company announcements</li>
<li>Links to internal web apps &amp; cloud resources</li>
<li>Calendars</li>
<li>Policies</li>
<li>Employee directories&nbsp;</li>
<li>Forms&nbsp;</li>
<li><a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-documentation-apps-gdrive-dropbox/" rel="follow noopener">Procedures</a>&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<h2>Types of intranets</h2>
Today, you can group most intranet solutions into one of three groups:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Traditional intranet: A centralized portal-style intranet that provides CMS-like access to web pages, resources, and files.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Social intranet: Social intranets add features like chatting, liking, and @ mentions to traditional intranets. They also usually support more integrations and modern features (e.g. support for mobile access) than traditional intranet solutions.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Intelligent intranet: Intelligent intranets aim to modernize the intranet experience with a user-focus, advanced search, integrations, and collaboration features beyond what is found in other intranet platforms.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<h2>The difference between an intranet and the internet</h2>
Under the hood, an intranet and the Internet use many of the same protocols and technologies. Traffic flows back and forth between servers and clients based on DNS names and IP addresses. Users connect to a site using a web browser and click links on HTML web pages.&nbsp;
The key difference is while the Internet is open to anyone, an intranet is isolated to an individual organization. For example, you may only be able to connect to your company&rsquo;s intranet via VPN, after authenticating using a cloud service provider, or when you&rsquo;re in the office.&nbsp;
<h2>What about extranets?</h2>
Extranets are intranets shared by multiple organizations. As an example: if you grant your suppliers or customers access to your intranet, you now have an extranet.&nbsp;
<h2>The pros and cons: Should you have an intranet?&nbsp;</h2>
Done well, intranets can make employees more engaged and informed, which in turn makes them more productive. Intuitively, this makes sense. If you have easy access to all the information and tools you need, you get more of the important stuff done.&nbsp;
Unfortunately, intranets often fall short of their potential, with <a href="https://blog.enplug.com/7-surprising-internal-communications-stats" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">research suggesting</a> only 13% of employees use their intranet daily and over 30% never use it.
So, why is it that in practice the impact of intranets tends to be underwhelming?&nbsp;&nbsp;
From a user perspective, the low engagement is often caused by the difficulty of finding information and using the intranet or the simple fact the intranet is full of dated and irrelevant information. Intranets often suffer from stale, redundant, or hard-to-find data. Additionally, intranets often lack thoughtful user-experience design and easy-to-use integrations for the apps where teams do their real work (e.g. <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-project-management-asana-trello-jira/" rel="follow noopener">project management</a> software like Jira and CRMs like SalesForce).&nbsp;
But why is it so common for intranets to get into this state? In a word: complexity.
Building and maintaining an intranet is both technically complex and resource-intensive. Beyond simply standing up the platform, overcoming customization, usability, and integration challenges is no small task. Often, outside consultants and developers are needed to devise and implement an intranet strategy. Then internal stakeholders need training and onboarding to begin using the platform.&nbsp;
Even when the initial provisioning and deployment of an intranet goes well, maintaining content over time often falls by the wayside. This is because maintaining an intranet platform becomes additional &ldquo;work about work.&rdquo; Stakeholders lose interest as they focus on the apps where real work gets done, the intranet content goes stale, and users look elsewhere for the information they need.&nbsp;
In turn, knowledge that should have been easily accessible on the company intranet becomes tribal knowledge. Information silos form, work becomes disjointed, and <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/got-knowledge/" rel="follow noopener">knowledge management</a> problems snowball.&nbsp;
To address these problems, work hubs &mdash; which use a more lightweight and integrated approach &mdash; are emerging as a way to enable improved productivity in the modern digital workplace.
<h2>What&rsquo;s a work hub?</h2>
A work hub integrates an organization&rsquo;s collaboration, knowledge-management, and resource-sharing tools to provide people end-to-end visibility and streamline how work gets done.&nbsp;
A work hub &mdash; like Qatalog &mdash; offers a modern approach to enabling <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/becoming-a-world-class-knowledge-worker/" rel="follow noopener">knowledge workers.</a> Qatalog acts as the connectivity layer, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/limited-visibility-at-work/" rel="follow noopener">giving people the visibility of</a>, and accessibility to, the information they need. As opposed to creating new complex workflows to maintain organizational knowledge, Qatalog integrates with the tools you&rsquo;re already using and allows you to focus on &ldquo;real&rdquo; work.&nbsp;
For example, with Qatalog you have a single people-focused hub that provides visibility across tools. You can search all your connected tools to find relevant information in real-time, see who is working on what regardless of the app used to track the work, track workflows from a single integrated solution, and share one-to-many posts across multiple collaboration apps.&nbsp;
Suppose you want to find information on &ldquo;Project X,&rdquo; but you don&rsquo;t know if the documents you need are in Confluence, shared in a Slack channel, or posted to your CRM. With Qatalog, you simply run a single search and get back results from all your tools.&nbsp;
<h2>Making a decision on an intranet vs. a work hub</h2>
While intranet solutions still have their place, for many digital businesses a work hub provides a more agile approach to knowledge management. With work hubs, teams now have a way to access the information they need quickly and easily. No months-long IT projects. No coding. No need to maintain a complex platform. Simply integrate and go.&nbsp;

Should you invest the time and effort in an intranet, or implement a work hub instead? We take a look at each solution in this post.

Intranet vs Work Hub: Which is Best? | Qatalog

Work about work takes up 60% of the average knowledge worker’s time.  Enter intranets, the traditional solution for providing centralized access to information and apps.

How an intranet differs from a work hub

Even before working from home became the norm, companies frequently used work management tools across their organizations. Each team has specific problems they solve, and each uses the tools that make sense to them. However, these productivity and collaboration tools do not always help us bridge the gaps between teams, or enhance visibility into what&rsquo;s happening across an organization. That&rsquo;s where work hubs come into play.
Let&rsquo;s explore what they are and how this combo works.&nbsp;
<h2>What are workplace tools and apps?</h2>
Workplace tools are the softwares, apps, websites, and resources that we use to get our work done. Quite often we&rsquo;re so used to them that we don&rsquo;t even realize how many we actually use every day.&nbsp; According to 2020 <a href="https://www.okta.com/businesses-at-work/2020/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">research by Okta</a>, the average company uses 88 workspace apps&mdash;and over 10 percent of companies use over 200!
There&rsquo;s email, of course. Everyone has an email. Then there&rsquo;s team messaging tools like <a href="https://slack.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Slack</a> for those quick questions and updates. There&rsquo;s project management tools such as <a href="https://asana.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Asana</a>, <a href="https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Jira</a> and <a href="https://clubhouse.io/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Clubhouse</a>, there&rsquo;s wikis, like <a href="https://www.notion.so/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Notion</a>, or <a href="https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Confluence</a>. And we can&rsquo;t forget about <a href="https://zoom.us/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Zoom</a> and <a href="https://docs.google.com/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Google Docs</a>. There are many useful tools, so let&rsquo;s look at them in a bit more detail.&nbsp;
HR software
HR software is essential for Human Resources and People Operations teams to manage people&rsquo;s personal data, HR metrics, and payroll, and to store our contracts, benefits and holiday information. At Qatalog we use <a href="http://charliehr.com" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">CharlieHR</a>, for example. It&rsquo;s also quite useful for team leads&mdash;all the information you need to manage your team well from an admin perspective is there. However, for the rest of the company, it&rsquo;s just a handy tool to book holidays. We log in, see how many days we have left, book the days off, and log out.&nbsp;
Project management software
When we get team-specific, things get more complicated. There are tools such as <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-project-management-asana-trello-jira/" rel="follow">Asana, Jira, and Clubhouse that we use to track our tasks and projects</a>. They can be individual or shared with teams for visibility. However, no one tool works for everyone. Engineers use project management software that makes sense to them, but the rest of the company usually tries to stay away from their tools of choice. Unfortunately, this creates silos of information that are hard to join up.
Corporate wiki &amp; intranet
Then there&rsquo;s <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/qatalog-vs-company-wiki-notion-confluence/">the wiki or intranet</a>&mdash;the source of truth for all the information that&rsquo;s being worked on in a company. At Qatalog we use Notion. Confluence is another popular alternative. We go to Notion for our processes such as how to book a holiday, benefits, how to expense, and how to request help from a team member. Wikis are great for storing information that doesn&rsquo;t change often. However, it&rsquo;s a common practice for a lot of companies to adjust or even hack single-purpose solutions to meet their broader business needs. Next thing you know, wikis are used for the information that needs constant updating, such as who in the team is working on what. This type of information may need weekly refreshing and becomes one team member&rsquo;s tedious job to keep it up-to-date.&nbsp;
Video conferencing&nbsp;
Let&rsquo;s not forget about video calls. Almost all companies dial into at least one daily. We use calls for project status updates, team meetings, and to bring everyone together. These are all good reasons, but if at some point we start spending <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/communication-overload/">too much time on calls</a>, we may feel we can&rsquo;t get any work done.&nbsp;
Other SaaS tools
Finally, there are analysis tools with dashboards, business automation software, goal setting and tracking tools, and document writing and creation apps. The list of workplace tools goes on, and information gets scattered across them. In our attempt to promote productivity and collaboration at work, we&rsquo;ve adopted too many SaaS tools that <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/new-way-of-work/">in aggregate produce a counter-effect</a>.
Over 70 percent of companies we spoke to said that they spend too much time searching for information. Our daily work shouldn&rsquo;t have to involve becoming investigators, <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-do-you-search-for-files-at-work/">searching for information all the time</a>, looking across all these different tools trying to understand who is working on what and who you should ask if you need something.
<h2>So how can a work hub help us and how is it different from yet another work management tool?</h2>
<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/what-is-a-work-hub/" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">A work hub organizes your work tools</a> and helps you get the most out of them. It integrates all the different tools that we use daily and helps us add context to our work. Sounds great, but what does this really look like?
A work hub maps and links together profiles of all the people, teams and projects in your organization, as well as all the productivity and collaboration tools they use. Thus it becomes a place where you can find and access everything about a team or company. It is updated automatically, making sure you always have the latest information to do your best work.
Let&rsquo;s take an engineering manager who has several projects running at the same time. Each project has lots of people engaged and some may even overlap. All these projects are at different stages with progress, milestones, and blockers. Previously, this engineering manager may have had to rely on Slack channels, <a href="https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira">JIRA </a>reports, <a href="http://www.github.com">GitHub</a> repositories, and Teams calls to know who is working on what and to get exact updates. But with a work hub, the manager can make sense of where all the projects are, who is working on them, and how each project is progressing against its targets. A work hub allows folks to easily share progress within teams and across the wider company. It brings it all together. It&rsquo;s a connective tissue that makes sense of things.
Using a work hub untangles the mess of not knowing what is going on at work. By simplifying search and tying information together, we suddenly get back a lot of time. We also get a sense of peace and balance&mdash;in a way that frees us to perform at our very best.

What’s the difference between workplace tools and a work hub? A work hub organizes your work tools and helps you get the most out of them. Read more in our blog.

Work management tool vs work hub | Qatalog

Using a work hub untangles the mess of not knowing what is going on at work. By simplifying search and tying information together, we suddenly get back a lot of time.

What’s the difference between a work management tool and a work hub?

<h2>The workspace is exploding with software apps</h2>
For a category that&rsquo;s been around for just a few decades, team productivity and collaboration SaaS has quickly taken its place at the center of our working lives&mdash;very quickly. According to 2020 <a href="https://www.okta.com/businesses-at-work/2020/">research by Okta</a> on how businesses run today, the average company is now using 88 workspace apps and over 10% of companies use over 200!
SaaS startups, and especially the many launched over the past decade, are a reflection of one thing: as the world becomes more and more digital, our ways of working are changing. Offices have gone from physical to remote, documents from printed to Google Docs, from face-to-face chats to Slack and Zoom, or async tools like Threads, from managing projects on physical whiteboards and cork boards to virtual kanbans and gantt charts with Asana and Trello, and from paper folders and filing cabinets to online wikis with Confluence and Notion...the list goes on. There are so many productivity and collaboration tools that you can now find various <a href="https://medium.com/lightspeed-venture-partners/mapping-workplace-collaboration-startups-526915751b0e">maps</a> about the <a href="https://medium.com/@Pinver/mapping-the-future-of-work-startup-investor-ecosystem-2db5049f2c86">space</a>.
Each of those tools is unbeatable at their specific purpose: collaborating on docs, managing projects, storing files, connecting team members, etc. What is missing is the actual virtual workspace, the one place where you can bring all those blocks, and the precious knowledge that lives in them, together and from which you can control everything.
And it&rsquo;s not necessarily only about control, but about the compounding value that comes from putting these blocks together. After all, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Why do you need this virtual workspace or team hub? Because under this progressive workspace unbundling (and a pandemic that threw everyone into remote work), teams might feel as lost as if they were alone in the jungle.
<h2>A jungle of tools, tabs, and apps</h2>
<a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/productivity-tools-killing-productivity/" rel="follow">With the explosion in SaaS usage, many teams start feeling lost</a>. When you say the average mid-market company uses 185 apps, it still feels ok. But when you consider app-to-person connections, that number grows exponentially to 4,406, according to <a href="https://www.blissfully.com/saas-trends/2020-annual-report/">Blissfully</a>.
Even worse, those people do get lost trying to remember where everything goes, or where things are supposed to go (eg. folders, pages, in which format, etc.).&nbsp;
But the real promise of these apps isn&rsquo;t just in what they do individually &mdash; it&rsquo;s what they can do together. And that&rsquo;s because each of them is great at something, but imagine what they could do if they&rsquo;d work as a team.
Over time, confusion grows, which is no wonder since 77% of teams we spoke to report that in their company there is no process for documenting or storing information. Whether you&rsquo;re a new hire or a seasoned employee, it&rsquo;s become too easy to get tangled up in a jungle of open tabs and apps.
As such, 71% of the same teams say that they spend too much time searching for information like files, projects and people&rsquo;s details. That comes with a high price in terms of:
<ol>
<li>Time and resources wasted scrolling through threads, channels, and search engines that don&rsquo;t always work&mdash;time that could be used on more productive, valuable tasks;</li>
<li>Unnecessary meetings, since when information is difficult to find, there&rsquo;s a tendency to set up too many informal catch ups, which become a headache with remote teams;</li>
<li>Duplicate work, occurring when people assume the information either doesn&rsquo;t exist or is lost, so they spend their time recreating it.</li>
</ol>
Some people may look at that and think, &ldquo;That means there&rsquo;s still a perfect, all-in-one workspace app waiting to be built!&rdquo; But it&rsquo;s not that easy.
<h2>The missing piece of the SaaS puzzle: The work hub</h2>
The next generation of teams doesn&rsquo;t need a better documentation tool or better chat. Teams need a compass to better navigate this jungle of apps&mdash;an operating system that brings all the pieces of our modern workspace together, and lets teams keep using each individual app for its specific purpose.
Imagine having quick access to all the company information gathered from all these tools&mdash;people, teams, and projects&mdash;without the need to ping anyone.&nbsp;
Having all those pieces in one place instead of spread across a thousand open tabs and apps means that employees have more than just a map of the jungle&mdash;they&rsquo;re able to serve as their own expert guide, feel empowered, productive, and connected with the team, ensuring that they&rsquo;re always happy at home at the end of the day.
With 60% of teams we spoke to saying they have no visibility on what others are working on, that kind of centralization can bring significant value to productivity, collaboration and overall cohesion.
Plus, there are real costs associated with needing to keep everyone engaged and using all those workspace apps: duplicate and orphaned subscriptions are up respectively 80% and 100% from 2018 to 2019 (Source: <a href="https://www.blissfully.com/saas-trends/2020-annual-report/">Blissfully, 2020</a>). Having an operating system that brings them all together could generate significant savings, both in terms of time and costs.
Take a simple example: You manage a 15-person cross-functional growth team made of engineers, designers, product managers and growth marketers, each using some tools in common (eg. Slack, Google Drive, Confluence), some using unique tools (eg. engineers are on Github and JIRA, designers on Asana and Figma, and growth marketers on Zapier, Hubspot and Notion). As a team lead, your job is to track everything that&rsquo;s been done during the first month on various cross-functional projects.
Today, that means:
<ol>
<li>Keeping track of project links and resources from all the different tools each team is working on (eg. the Asana board from marketing, the Figma prototypes from design, the JIRA tickets from product, the project Slack channel(s), etc.);</li>
<li>Gathering recurring updates by asking each team member to individually report on what they&rsquo;ve been doing (which is a lot of time and effort for everyone, and everyone has a different way of doing it); you&rsquo;ll then need to re-package those updates into a single update to report to your Director or VP;</li>
<li>Endless scrolling through Slack, and emails, and Dropbox, and Asana, and Trello, trying to ignore the noise to find the signal. Not only is it draining, but it comes with a big risk of missing important information;</li>
<li>Standardizing recurring processes like reporting, briefings, approval processes, 1:1s notes, etc. to ensure that everyone is following the same pattern on recurring tasks, all without falling into micromanagement.</li>
</ol>
Well, this sounds like a full time job on top of your actual one.
<a href="https://qatalog.com/work-hub/" rel="follow">What if there&rsquo;s a better way?</a> A tool that brings all of your workspace apps under one roof and orchestrates together their unique talents to give you instant visibility on everything your teammates are doing across each of those products. A product that gives you a birds-eye view over everything that&rsquo;s happening at your company, and without the need to ping anyone.&nbsp;
<h2>Connecting teams, and all their tools, together</h2>
Remote work has to incorporate the growing diversity of tools with teams that don&rsquo;t see each other every day. Although each of those tools is great at what it does, today it&rsquo;s a struggle to make the most out of each of them together. That&rsquo;s a shame, since it&rsquo;s clear that the whole of all those tools could be much greater than the sum of the individual parts.
So what&rsquo;s the solution? <a href="https://qatalog.com/blog/post/how-to-become-a-fully-remote-high-performance-team/" rel="follow">Check out this article</a>, where we dive more into the details of what this might look like, and how teams need to adapt to keep up with remote collaboration.&nbsp;

There are so many productivity and collaboration tools at work, but something is still missing. Read more in Qatalog Productivity blog series.

Lost in the jungle of workspace apps? | Qatalog

In today's workspace, there are so many productivity and collaboration tools that teams can feel lost, but there is something that is actually missing.

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