Marketing specialist John Cant works independently to help start-up businesses with their initial establishment and early growth. We caught up with him in our hot-desk area to learn more about how he does it all, and which project he is focusing on at the moment.
“I’m currently working with a software start-up called Hubscope,” explains John. “It’s a visualisation application used by IT project teams that shows how people, requirements, services and technology interconnect.”
An extremely useful resource, Hubscope creates cleverly designed maps to help each team member understand how the project and the people behind it fit together. This means that it has the power to transform the way digital teams work, benefiting users on an individual basis as well as projects as a whole.
“The different perspectives, layout options and features, such as filtering, provide a focus on what’s important for each person working on a project,” said John. “And this sort of communication is vital when collaborating as part of a group, however small.”
When asked why this is important to business, John added: “Seeing things from someone else’s perspective promotes a shared understanding, which gets everyone on the same page, whether they are on the technology or business side of the project.”
The impressive application allows each stakeholder to look at things from another team member’s point of view in just two clicks. This means that even if you’re not an expert in tech, you can understand where the digital team fits in.
As an example, John mainly looks after the marketing side of operations, but still has to communicate with the tech team over in New Zealand: “We’ve used email marketing and Twitter as our main channels so far and have been very cautious in our approach. This has enabled us to concentrate our efforts on getting feedback to validate ideas, which in turn helps us to pinpoint areas of improvement before releasing the paid version of the software.”
Being a member of the C4DI has helped with the smooth running of launching the tool, especially as the team are located 11,000 miles apart: “The guys I work with are based on the other side of the world, and aspects of the C4DI were particularly helpful during their recent visit to the UK,” enthused John. “It was great to have a fantastic space to host them in, for both working on the project and meetings.”
Furthermore, having access to the C4DI community gave John and his co-workers the opportunity to organise a breakfast event, which the Hubscope team maximised on to gather useful feedback on their product, as well as provide insight and added value for those who attended.
For these reasons, John highly recommends C4DI membership, adding that it’s great to be surrounded by positive and helpful people all of the time. John has even had the opportunity to begin working with fellow C4DI hot-desker Neil Curtis, helping to promote his e-commerce venture and eventually export to Japan. Meanwhile, the Hubscope team have launched the first paid version of their app, which is now available to download at hubscope.com.
The rest of 2016 is certainly a busy one for John, who rightly lives by J.K. Rowling’s mantra: “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”
Using Visualisation to Transform Team Communication
