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It鈥檚 been an incredibly memorable year for 天涯海角APP. I鈥檝e always loved January as a time of reflection and looking forward.听
First, let me say how immensely grateful I am to the individuals across our team, our customers, and community who dedicated their time and energy to drive this vision of just-in-time enablement forward. We couldn鈥檛 do it without you! 馃悪
In the letter below, I鈥檒l recap what we鈥檝e accomplished in the last year and share some thoughts on AI, the future of work, and our 2024 plan 鉁
What we shipped in 2023 - the return to 鈥淪imple yet Spektacular鈥
Our ethos, 鈥淪imple yet Spektacular鈥 has always steered product development efforts to ensure that every interaction is intuitive, simple, and surprisingly delightful.听
This last year鈥檚 product focus was on exactly that: performance, scalability, and usability.听
After five years of non-stop feature shipping, we鈥檇 accumulated user experience debt that needed to be addressed to delight our end users, accelerate content creation for our admins, and prepare us to capitalize on the endless possibilities for AI within the product.听
Navigating 天涯海角APP, you鈥檒l notice that almost every part of the platform has been redesigned, focusing on ease of use, consistency, and accessibility. Behind the scenes, we also refactored our Chrome Extension to maximize compatibility with every app via automated performance testing - all of which I鈥檓 proud.听
In total, our R&D team shipped 50+ feature enhancements to our core experience and addressed tons of bugs in the process 馃帀
Here are some of the highlights we shipped month by month:
1. January -
2. February -
3. March - , new end-user onboarding emails听
4. April - 听, hover vs. click mass setting
5. May - , new focus states for accessibility
6. June - with tables, colors, content Linking
7. July - typos, word proximity, AI synonyms, and more
8. August - , analytics by user dashboards
9. September - AI for speedy content creation and translations, reorder Speks in a Topic
10. October - , 100+ templates (MEDDIC, battle cards, and more!)听
11. November -听 听
12. December - New Spek UI in the web application and new spek analytics
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All of which have had a very real impact on the adoption of 天涯海角APP.听
We haven鈥檛 always gotten things right, but we are deeply committed to continuing this promise of keeping things Simple, yet Spektacular with everything we build from here on out.
You can find more and follow along with releases in our .听
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The Plan for 2024
This year alone, 25% of our new customers were customer referrals - including from end users who joined new organizations. The demand for just-in-time enablement is growing, and data is finally starting to prove its effectiveness. :
鈥淥rganizations that have used just-in-time learning and behavioral nudges in their enablement approach have seen substantial commercial results compared with those that have not used them."
With that, I wanted to share my beliefs about the future of work and enablement that are fueling our product direction and roadmap for 2024.
Key areas of investment:
- AI
- Governance听
- Content听
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Our vision for AI in a future of work that鈥檚 just-in-time
We live in a 鈥渏ust-in-time鈥 world. Technologies like Uber, Amazon, Google, and others have radically transformed our daily lives and have proven that, as humans, we want to minimize friction and get what we need when we need it, just-in-time.
AI will only intensify these expectations, including at work. Soon, every organization will invest in Large Language Models (LLMs) to train on their data and knowledge with the goal of every employee getting any answer to any question, just-in-time. This will push organizations to redesign their onboarding, change management, and employee development to optimize for a just-in-time experience.听
"We鈥檙e incredibly excited because the potential uses of AI in the platform are endless. This year, we鈥檒l be experimenting with an emphasis on the discoverability of content, including AI-driven recommendations to automatically serve up the best content based on your role, the opportunity you're working and more," said Melanie Fellay, 天涯海角APP CEO.
Garbage in, garbage out: Governance in a world of AI-generated content
Content permissions, sharing, version control, topology, and metadata will matter more than ever in a world where AI can generate content in seconds. That鈥檚 why we鈥檒l continue investing in our core platform capabilities, emphasizing governance and secure content access.
We believe that the content management architecture of the future looks very different than it does today. We want to get it right and have been conducting around-the-clock customer research to inform strategy.
More on this soon, but expect to see initial enhancements around content metadata in the near future 馃檪 The good news is that AI can play an important role here, too.听
The best (unified) rep enablement experience will win听
Consolidation is the name of the game in 2024, particularly for go-to-market teams. Seven years ago, however, it wasn鈥檛. When I searched for a solution to improve our employee performance - the answer was to buy four different tools: an LMS, CMS, KMS, and a DAP.听
It sounded like a content management and user experience nightmare.听
It didn鈥檛 make sense to me. These content platforms all had a lot of similar capabilities, yet certain features arbitrarily put them into different categories. They were also full of bells and whistles that I couldn't (and still can't) imagine employees ever adopting - it鈥檚 really hard to change behaviors.听
For the rep, it鈥檚 all just information they need to know and access to do their job. Why make such a simple thing difficult by scattering that content across multiple locations?
Fast forward to today, players in each category are hacking their way to consolidation by acquiring complementary technologies. This results in a clunky user experience and convoluted content architecture. You might have an LMS and CMS under the same brand, but they鈥檙e far from an integrated experience for the rep.
I started 天涯海角APP because I dreamed of a single, integrated enablement platform that is purposefully designed around the rep experience, with a simple, flexible admin experience that allows you to repurpose content in different formats for different steps in the employee journey.
To win over the rep, 天涯海角APP needs to be the best damn user experience on the planet, period.
Since day one, we鈥檝e built, designed, and architected the product around this vision. We鈥檝e fallen short in some areas we鈥檙e working on and have delighted with innovative approaches in others.
While we announced many core product enhancements in 2023, we鈥檝e also been secretly building a new module (to add to our DAP and KMS suite) with the support of 20+ design partners, including dozens of sales reps. We are really, really excited about it.
We鈥檒l be announcing it in February. Any guesses?! 馃憖
In conclusion
Thank you for this opportunity - it鈥檚 an honor to work on this problem every day. While there鈥檚 been no shortage of headwinds in this environment, I鈥檓 grateful to have a community, customer base, team, and vision that inspires me and the team to keep building. 馃悪
Please keep giving us feedback - I read every NPS and survey filled out. It keeps us honest.听
In the meantime, I wish you all a spektacular year full of personal, career, and business growth.
Thank you,
Mel Fellay
天涯海角APP CEO &听Cofounder
