INTERVIEW Adam Clyne - Coolr
“Part of the work that we do is figuring out, for large organisations, how they use
Teams versus how they use Workplace.“ Adam Clyne, CEO - Coolr
The Workplace Explosion
After Facebook announced that its Workplace product now has over three million paying subscribers on the
platform Comms Business decided to track down boutique Workplace provider Coolr to see what their CEO and
founder Adam Clyne had to report
Comms Business Magazine
(CMB): What is this huge growth
in Workplace users down to?
Adam Clyne (AC): e gr owt h
of Workplace is down to a few
di erent key aspects.
It ful ls the promise where
I think many other companies
have rolled out systems,
with the best of intentions,
which didn’t live up to the
promise. Workplace lives up
to the promise of amazing
communication, collaboration
and creating the network e ect.
e second thing that’s
driving a lot of the growth is
connecting the disconnected.
One of the big questions in
the market is how you reach
workforces who have often been
ignored or who are just not part
of the internal communication
ecosystem because they didn’t
have email addresses, didn’t have
access to O ce 365 or their job
is not in front of a computer
screen. When you think about
the people in retail, people
in manufacturing, people in
restaurants, cleaners in hotels etc
there are these huge numbers of
employees who are what we call
disconnected. We are now able
to connect them to Workplace,
and it’s a completely di erent
experience for employees.
e third thing is the
momentum on the product,
I think that when people are
thinking about whether to
go with a new platform, they
want to see if it works for a
similar business in their sector.
Workplace is now proving again
and again that it works in every
di erent category vertical and
sector. All kinds of top tier hero
brands are playing on Workplace
and it has captured people’s
interest.
CBM: What does the Facebook
brand bring and how important
is Workplace to the Group?
AC: Workplace has the added
bene t of the Facebook brand
behind it which comes with all
those key learnings about how
to make a product people want
to keep revisiting and that does
what it’s meant to. I think that
the Facebook aspect is a huge
advantage because you’ve also
got this universe of engineers,
some of the best on the planet,
working on the product.
e product is strategically
important to Facebook. Mark
Zuckerberg spoke about it at F8,
the big developer conference, last
year. He spoke about it being on
the roadmap for Facebook, so
it’s not a thing that they are just
playing around with.
CBM: Are you coming up against
Microsoft Teams often?
AC: I think they do di erent
things. Part of the work that
we do is guring out, for
large organisations, how they
use Teams versus how they
use Workplace. Most of our
customers are on O ce 365 in
some form or another. Whether
they use Teams, or whether they
use Teams for a speci c function
is often the conversation.
Going back to the disconnected
workforces, they may not be on
O ce 365, they will not have an
O ce 365 licence. Sometimes
we nd that some departments
want to run a project on Teams,
or another collaboration
platform. But what we often
say is when the company comes
together as a whole, and to
have a conversation as one,
the network e ect happens on
Workplace, you don’t get that
anywhere else.
CBM: Should the Channel be
more aware of Workplace?
AC: I think people should be
curious about Workplace. I think
that if they’re not quite ready
or they don’t know what it is,
they should nd out and have a
look at it. e Channel should
know about it, what I mean by
that is customers will be hearing
about it, they will be hearing
the big buzz, and the Channel
has a responsibility to know and
understand that buzz and what
kind of conversations their clients
are having. While they might be
pushing or talking about other
products, the end customer
might be thinking and exploring
Workplace. I think they should
be interested about what it is
and what the di erences are,
how it works, and what the
opportunities are.
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