MiQ is a programmatic media partner for marketers and agencies and an expert in data science, analytics and programmatic trading. It operates in a fast-moving industry with many innovative solutions vying for the top spots, but MiQ has been predicting trends and creating impactful communications for over a decade, growing stronger with each year. To stay competitive, it strives to continually streamline, speed up processes and have outstanding internal communication. That’s why, early on, MiQ bet on Slack.
‘Before Slack, fragmented communication and the volume of emails exchanged internally created a problem that needed to be nipped in the bud. As the company grew, with new offices opening around the world, we needed to respect different time zones and integrate separate tools and solutions to streamline work. So, we adopted Slack, and it grew with us’, says Yuva Rajesh, Lead System Engineer at MiQ.
What started as a simple messaging tool and a standard communication channel evolved with the company, as MiQ introduced new apps and implementations while upgrading Slack versions to stay ahead of the game. As MiQ recognised Slack’s potential to solve a variety of new challenges, it became clear that this was a platform the company could rely on to solve any future internal communication and workflow problems.
‘When I start my computer, the first thing I do is open Slack. It’s my primary work tool. It has everything integrated: my tasks, reminders and calendar. When you look at our analytics of conversations and calls, everything is happening in Slack’.
Building a global village
Slack is a huge part of MiQ’s daily operations to collaborate internally or externally. ‘When I start my computer, the first thing I do is open Slack’, says Rajesh. ‘It’s my primary work tool. It has everything integrated: my tasks, reminders and calendar. When you look at our analytics of conversations and calls, everything is happening in Slack’.
Slack permeates MiQ’s systems and allows the company to use it for almost everything, from fast employee onboarding and vendor communication, to support of remote work, to analysing and contributing to employee wellness and engagement. It’s akin to a village square where the company’s 1,200 global employees can find their voice, share clear communication, get work done, take part in celebrations and connect with external collaborators.
‘At MiQ, Slack is not about a region or a country’, says Chaitra U. J., Senior System Engineer at MiQ. ‘It’s global’. With 85 Slack Connect channels, this global village approach means that vendors and partners also participate in a culture of collaboration, as channels are shared to save time and allow for real-time communication with external contributors.
To ensure that everyone is included, the company’s teams rely on video and voice messaging – Clips – to record meetings for those who can’t participate or are in different time zones. Clips also hosts tutorials and guides to help staff self-serve on technical issues. ‘There is also the added bonus of the file sizes being small and easy to upload’, comments Rajesh. ‘That’s a fancy feature which we really appreciate, as we don’t need to waste time compressing files and can simply upload them’.
Creating a culture of support
The company culture feeds off the sense of connectedness that starts with channels and Huddles – an audio-first way to communicate – used by employees each day. ‘Huddles is a big part of our every day’, comments Rajesh. ‘It’s where my team lives’.
However, easier communication is just one part of what’s possible when creating a healthy work culture. With the Empuls integration, MiQ can also celebrate its employees, supporting the company’s dedication to engagement and retention. This tool is used as a colleague recognition and rewards platform with regular shout-out days when a message of appreciation is sent to one employee each month, posted to the general channel and pinned. It even helps colleagues remember to wish each other happy birthday as an HR platform integration allows them to schedule messages for the right day.
MiQ also uses the Lattice integration to help employees track their performance and discuss issues with their manager. Employees can see all their reports, status and OKRs (objectives and key results) in real time. Every month, Slack prompts them to provide information on what’s gone well and what hasn’t. ‘This is helpful to us because we can track our own progress and use this information in our one-to-one conversations with managers and in peer-to-peer conversations’, says Chaitra.
To better adjust to what employees need, MiQ uses Slack analytics to measure engagement and sentiment, while multiple wellness surveys each month provide the necessary data. Additionally, Infeedo – the company’s integrated engagement bot – reaches out to staff after their work anniversary to ask about their experience and future plans with the company. ‘If this was done through an email with a link to an online form, I think the response rate would be close to zero’, comments Chaitra.
‘Slack is very user-friendly. It saves us a lot of time when creating new processes’.
Empowering IT with integrations
As MiQ grew and started applying new tools, it discovered the impact that integrations and apps can have on simplifying and consolidating work. The business uses them for countless operations which are woven into IT to significantly speed up and automate work. And this automation starts with a service request desk that allows the team to see immediately when someone needs support.
‘With the JIRA integration, our folks can pick a ticket and respond instantly’, says Rajesh. ‘This saves time and prevents delays caused by email, which is how the team used to operate’. The team now responds much more quickly. What’s more, the person raising the ticket is automatically notified when the problem is solved, removing the need for lengthy back-and-forth communication. The IT team also relies on an incident response tool that sends notifications of critical issues straight to Slack, which means that they can be solved much more quickly.
Overall, the IT team depends on integrations to receive instant notifications of new tickets and automatically track updates before sending them to the relevant contacts. Slack also enables the technical teams to easily create streamlined workflows and prevent unnecessary work and effort. ‘Slack is very user-friendly’, says Chaitra. ‘It saves us a lot of time when creating new processes’.
Company developers have also created over 100 apps for testing purposes and internal applications, with ease of use contributing to this wealth of solutions. ‘You can create an app with just a few clicks’, says Rajesh. ‘It’s very easy and user-friendly. Team members create their own playbooks, too, and use them for customised alerts in their private channels’.
Supporting business growth
For MiQ, implementing Slack is a journey without a final destination. The company recognises Slack’s potential for growth and is always seeking to ensure its processes are streamlined, automated and collaborative.
With the platform’s ability to connect and engage, Slack also provides the added benefit of making employees increasingly empowered, informed and aligned. In fact, always on the lookout for improvements, MiQ recently upgraded to Slack Enterprise to test new features – including SCIM provisioning, message activity, channel management tools and workflow builders – and search for new automations.
Thanks to Slack, MiQ maintains a startup mindset as it relies on speed to remain competitive by predicting trends and creating better communication for its clients. And since the organisation practices what it preaches, it will continue looking for new Slack tools to match this talent for business agility with its internal efforts of making employees happier as well as more engaged, efficient and productive. ‘With the integration and innovation, I feel like Slack is my companion and I use it to its maximum’, comments Rajesh.
