How Teamwork Spaces transformed YMtech’s communication & collaboration

Eleven years ago, Yuri Miloslavsky founded YMtech, a digital agency that specializes in IT solutions that help businesses run more smoothly. But as technology changed, Yuri knew that YMtech’s own internal processes needed to change too. Here’s how YMtech added Teamwork Spaces to their tech stack to create a documentation hub that could grow with them.

Communication hurdles

One of the biggest challenges for small business owners is sharing information, and YMtech were feeling the struggle.

Whether the information was moving from managers to team members, team members to other team members, or team members to clients, crucial information was getting dropped along the way. They knew they needed an easy-to-access central location to swap ideas and updates because everyone was spending too much time repeating the same information or searching for the details they needed.

“The problem started with us, but ended with bad service to an end client. We didn’t document the initial client interaction properly, and when company representatives followed up, they were missing key information, so the client needed to repeat what he said. That didn’t make us look professional.”

Conversations and files could be anywhere: in emails, messaging apps, or in documents, and there wasn’t a lot of consistency about where those were located or when the last update was needed. Keeping collateral together like notes and links to media was another challenge.

Yuri didn’t have to look far for a better solution. YM Tech was already using Teamwork for their work management needs, and he saw that Teamwork Spaces had recently been added to the Teamwork suite as an intuitive content collaboration workspace. Using Teamwork Spaces, team members could create shared, interactive documents with widgets and original features that immediately organized information and stored materials in a single location.

Tools for transformation

Half of the challenge of communication is offering the right information at the right time. The other half is knowing if the information has been received. Teamwork Spaces solved that problem with its Required Reading feature. With Required Reading, Yuri could be confident that important content like SOPs, strategy memos, and organizational changes could be quickly and consistently communicated across the whole team or company without the need for repetitive meetings.

Pages can be assigned to any individuals or group, who then become followers of those pages. If edits or updates are made to the content, the followers receive an email, which alerts them to reread the material. Editors of any Required Reading page can get a report on how many people have read the page, complete with filterable lists so editors can see who still needs to read the material. These reports are extremely useful in pre-meeting preparation: editors have a good idea of what material should be familiar to team members or clients ahead of time.

The team at YMtech have found that meeting minutes for clients and team members have been completely transformed with Teamwork Spaces. Having a central location for meeting notes allows anyone to place information in a consistent, well-organized format. Yuri and his team members are now more likely to keep a much better record of internal and client-facing discussions, and then share them easily. No matter who had the initial contact with the client, Yuri’s follow-up conversations look professional and well prepared.

One of the most useful features for YMtech is the integration between Teamwork Spaces and Teamwork. Using one of the widgets, editors can instantly imbed a Teamwork task list in a document. Yuri uses this feature to give each project more clarity and direction. Keeping pace with change

Choosing Teamwork Spaces as a dedicated content collaboration and information-sharing platform has taken many of the rough edges off communication, both for client-facing and internal exchanges.

Yuri can tell that his employees are better informed on SOPs, policies, organizational changes, and key strategies, which saves time that was previously used to answer questions about how to complete work correctly. Now his team members have the freedom to work more independently and dedicate more hours toward creative work or solving problems.

Today, Yuri never wonders if new employees are getting consistent training because the material they are reading is exactly the same, even when it is revised to match YMtech’s ability to adapt to the marketplace. As innovations happen, Yuri can create an update and notify everyone simultaneously.

The results are obvious. Using Teamwork Spaces as the central platform for collaboration, discussion, and individual assignments has given the entire team more direction and motivation. As each project evolves, everyone stays up to date on new tasks and established outcomes.