Managing through COVID
At this morning's management meeting we discussed our readiness for what might lie ahead. We want to make sure that we can react quickly to external changes. While in the short term we probably won't see any negative impacts, it's possible that a recession could slow our growth in the long term if we don't prepare. It's also possible that we could benefit from all of this as more companies see the need for stronger online collaboration with employees and customers. In fact, we've already had a few sales inquiries asking about a rapid implementation and Mel has reported that searches for 'employee collaboration' are spiking.
I want to repeat what I said at the staff meeting: we don't have a lot of exposure to the industries that are being hard hit and we are in a solid financial position and can weather a sales slowdown if that were to happen. We are very fortunate compared to many others.
This week, I've asked the team to:
- Make sure that being 100% remote is working. Some of us are new to this and some of us are also dealing with having our kids at home.
- Communicate to our customers and sales prospects that we will continue to be able to provide a reliable service through this crisis. Tim and Paul are working on a summary of our business continuity plan which they will make available to the CSM and sales teams shortly.
- Pay close attention to all leading indicators that might suggest a change (positive or negative). Please help by pointing out to your manager anything that you think has changed and that can help us get ahead of any problems or opportunities.
- Be generous with any customers who have a legitimate need caused by the virus.
- Re-up our content, ads and outbound sales around internal collaboration, call center disruptions, and other use cases that could see growing demand under these conditions. Of course, we want to do this with the right tone.
I will continue to keep you posted on any impacts this has on the business. In the meantime, please Slack me if you have any questions or concerns that you would like to discuss in private. Thank you.
Comments
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This week the news reports will probably get worse and worse and so I hope everyone is able to manage their stress and anxiety levels. Our top priority is your wellbeing and I would ask you to take a minute to complete the short anonymous survey that Lindsay sent out yesterday.
At this morning's management meeting we discussed the early impacts of the crisis and while it's still early to predict how the business might be impacted, here are some reports:
- Working from home is going well although not the preferred situation for many people.
- Platform traffic is up significantly. March month-to-date page views are at 250M (with more than a week left) vs. an average of 221M for the past 3 months.
- R&D sprints went well and hasn't been hampered.
- March sales are strong. We are over $20K of new MRR with over a week to go and a large deal pending that could put us in record territory. Several sales cycles have been postponed, several have been accelerated or precipitated by the crisis. As of right now, it looks like a wash.
- Leads are on track to exceed the March goal.
- A few sales cycles have been put on hold and some scheduled meetings have been postponed as customers adjust to working from home and are being refocused.
- No direct customer churn yet but one small fitness related customer has asked to put billing on hold.
- We're getting some new customers asking for quick launches and many existing customers asking for urgent small theme changes. This is putting additional pressure on the CSM and Services teams.
Thanks everyone for working through these difficult time. I want to end my post with some of the stats from China showing things slowly getting back to normal:
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The last time most of us were in the office was March 11th, 20 days ago already. There are some positive signs emerging from parts of the world where they have been in lockdown for a while which give us hope. Unfortunately other parts of the world are in denial and will just contribute to stretching things out. If I had to guess, I'd say that things will start to open up gradually at the end of May. If I were a policy maker, I would ask that office workers who can work from home, continue to do so for even longer and I have a feeling that students won't be back in their classrooms until September. All to say that there is more work from home ahead of us. Let's hang in there and get through this.
We continue to monitor all parts of the business for early signs of a positive or negative impact. The good news is that sales for this month and for the quarter ending today will end up being the best in company history. If things do slow down, we'll be starting from an all time high. The idea of things slowing down just does not compute for me. We are going to push even harder on our market message that we can help companies save money if budgets are being cut and and we can help them deal with on-premise call centre disruptions by providing self-serve and community-based alternatives.
Stay home and stay safe.
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Hey everyone.
Just as there are some rules and best practices for working in an office, there are rules (which you should make and enforce for yourself) for working from home to ensure that you're productive and healthy. Those among us who have been working from home for some time already probably learned these lessons a long time ago, so please try not to laugh too hard as we all play catch up :)
After a few weeks working from home, here are some things I've learned that might be helpful to others:
Set a schedule for yourself
Working from home gives you greater flexibility over your schedule, even if all you do is remove the travel time. It can be easy to shift your work hours slowly over time (or even dramatically all of a sudden) to something unhealthy. It can also be very easy to keep working beyond normal hours, either very early or very late. That's not good for anyone for a prolonged period of time, so make sure you stick to a defined schedule. It's ok to shift it around sometimes to deal with children, pets, spouses, etc, but try hard to keep a sense of time.
Get ready for work
My bedroom is right next door to the room I'm working from. It can be so tempting to roll out of bed 2 minutes before the day starts and plop down in front of my laptop, but that starts to blur the line between work and non-work, and can slowly take a toll on mental health. Its better to get up at a reasonable time, do the normal pre-work preparation (shower, brush teeth, get dressed properly etc) to help your mind make sense of the day. This will help with setting a schedule, too.
Take breaks, especially for lunch
Just like the rest of these tips, working from home can easily blur the lines between personal time and work time. We want you to be productive when you're working, but now that your house is your office you need to make sure that you set some good boundaries between work and rest. Make sure you take breaks every now and then, and try not to eat in front of your laptop. You need to help your mind to feel time moving and to feel like it's getting a break from work once in a while.
Talk to people
Make sure you're reaching out to your family, friends, even co-workers... whoever. Keep some form of social connection intact to whatever extent you're able. If you're struggling with your work, or with stress, or just need to vent, there are many people at Vanilla who will gladly chat over a Zoom call with a beer and de-stress for a bit. I certainly count myself among those people who are open to chat at any time, so please poke me about that if you need to vent.
We're all in this one together, and as much as it sucks (which it really really does) I'm glad to be part of a group like this one. We could have done much worse :)
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Just a quick note this morning about our Q2 results. I'm not sure if it was announced elsewhere but we closed the large IBM deal last week and ended up posting another record sales quarter. We were hoping for a decent quarter but never expected to beat the record. This is truly remarkable. Thanks everyone for continuing to work so hard through these uncertain times. More details on our results and what it means going forward at the staff meeting next week.
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