Can you believe it? There’s a company valued at close to $2 billion, more than 5 million users, nearly 800 employees, and no office! Yes, you read that right, the company has no headquarters, no office space, or it has office space everywhere.
The company is InVision, a software startup dedicated to building the world’s leading product design platform.
As a software startup in an emerging industry, InVision has grown into a multi-billion dollar business leader in just a few years, which is achieved by a completely remote team in more than 40 states and 20 countries and regions around the world!
How does InVision do it?
Clark Valberg, Invision’s founder and CEO, believes that the screen has become the most important place in the world. As a result, they have developed not only platforms of collaborative design and prototyping tools for creating screens and digital experiences, but also companies that operate entirely through screens.
The proven benefits of remote work are numerous: productivity, cost savings, better work-life balance, and more. But it also presents huge challenges, including how to build a strong company culture, maintain clear communication and build rapport among colleagues who don’t sit together or see each other regularly.
With the help of Atlassian and Slack, InVision has addressed all of these challenges and more. They have built an interconnected, well-communicated, and highly effective team and award-winning corporate culture, as well as reusable processes and systems to extend this culture as they bring design-driven innovation to every company around the world.
Simplification begins with centralization
When Wendy Stockholm joined the company as director of its BizTech IT department, each team was using a number of tools to get the job done. The large and disjointed technology stack presents some challenges.
With Atlassian, it’s easy to get started and come up with solutions. I also like the idea of having a market for self-service apps.
— Wendy Stockholm, director of Invision Biztech
Because each team uses a different tool, employees not only waste time and lose tasks when switching between tools, but also make it difficult and difficult to cooperate across teams. Team leaders also find it nearly impossible to extract comprehensive reports or get a complete picture of the people and projects they manage. In order to continue the company’s rapid growth, they need to simplify their tools.
InVision needed a cloud-based platform that could meet their diverse needs and integrate well with other department-specific tools, such as HR’s resource management system. Wendy was already familiar with Atlassian, and once she started researching how Atlassian tools such as Jira Software, Confluence, and Trello could easily integrate with their other everyday tools, Atlassian quickly became Wendy’s first choice. Wendy: Atlassian is very easy to learn. Once you’re familiar with it, you can quickly come up with solutions to your current problems. And she likes the idea of having a market for self-service apps.
Through Slack and Atlassian integration, “every comment an employee makes on a Confluence page or in InVision is pushed to Slack, so we can get real-time updates.
— Dennis Field, Human Resources
Wendy is optimistic that migration and change management will be easier now that some of InVision’s departments (such as Engineering, Product and Design (EPD)) are already using Trello and Jirasoftware. She also appreciated InVision’s ability to integrate Atlassian with their other everyday tools, including their own products and Slack.
While Wendy and the BizTech team began to centralize their own systems and IT workflows into JIRA Software and Confluence, other departments were also using Atlassian. Today, InVision teams are using Atlassian products to help improve productivity, efficiency, visibility and collaborative office work.
Tailored solutions for each department
Every team at InVision has seen significant progress since using the Atlassian Cloud product. HR (InVision calls the People Team) and IT have undergone the biggest changes so far.
Previously, employees made IT requests by Posting a message on InVision’s IT Slack channel. However, IT staff cannot assign tasks, easily follow up requestors, track request status, or report results.
Atlassian cloud products are now the perfect solution to these problems without forcing employees to change their workflow. Because Slack integrates seamlessly with Atlassian products, employees can still post messages to Slack or submit requests directly through the JIRA Service Desk. Either way, trouble tickets can be automatically created in Jirasoftware with the Jira for Slack integration, where IT can assign and process requests, discuss problems with other team members through annotations, track tasks until they are completed, and report the results back to the leader. Employees can use Slack to keep track of updates on the status of problems, who is assigned to the task, and the latest information on the priority of the task. This saves the IT team time because they no longer have to answer status questions, and allows employees to focus on their core responsibilities without worrying about their IT requests being forgotten.
The HR team also used Atlassian to streamline work and improve the efficiency of communicating with employees. Their department relies on Trello to manage onboarding and on Confluence to keep track of information and share it with employees. Both solutions help create a great experience for new employees, especially when you consider InVision’s remote working model. Moreover, both solutions keep all employees abreast of the latest company news and policies.
At the same time, InVision encourages employees to use and integrate Atlassian in creative ways. Marie Kretlow and Dennis Field in Human Resources, for example, have integrated InVision with Slack and Confluence to visually show their work progress and keep up with updates in real time. “Marie and I are working on the employee handbook project,” Dennis explains. “We often use the FreeHand feature in Invision to draw ideas, and our prototype manual with Invision is embedded in the Confluence page. Any changes we make are automatically pushed to Confluence for everyone to see, and every comment an employee makes on a Confluence page or in Invision is pushed to Slack, so we can get real-time feedback from everyone.” Team members can also like Confluence page thumb up and reply to comments directly from the Slack channel they share.
As Marie and Dennis have experienced firsthand, the more InVision employees integrate Atlassian and Slack into their daily work and the other tools they use (including their own products), the more efficiency and improvement they achieve.
Hundreds of employees, hundreds of locations, one mission
Now, InVision has migrated all of its teams to Atlassian and integrated the solution with other everyday tools so that all of their systems and people can work together.
Since moving the Service request process to JIRA Service Desk and leveraging JIRA Software’s internal automation control, the number of IT work orders has been reduced by 50%.
Every department is feeling the impact of this new solution on its work. For example, IT director Eric Amlie says that since moving the Service request process to JIRA Service Desk, integrating with Slack and leveraging JIRA Software’s internal automation controls, IT work orders have been reduced by 50%. Atlassian and Slack also enable HR teams to seamlessly connect critical workflows with multiple moving parts and provide a better employee experience all the way through, Marie says.
Wendy believes Atlassian Cloud products will play a key role in extending and connecting InVision’s distributed team. “Our remote nature means we have to find people or tools that can provide us with accurate information. By using Atlassian centrally, we now have a virtual space — sort of like a physical representation for each department — where we can store knowledge and data, rather than relying on one person.” “Wendy explained. “It helps us stay consistent, focused and efficient. Reducing friction and interference is important to our efforts to improve visibility, improve reporting efficiency and accuracy, and streamline and optimize practices.”
Marie added that Atlassian not only helps InVision employees with their daily work, but also helps us fulfill our deeper mission of helping global companies innovate through digital design. “Our partnership with Atlassian will ultimately have an even more positive impact on InVision’s customers,” she said. “The more connected you are as a team, the better you can help customers create superior digital products and user experiences.”
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