Gigatronix, a UK-based company, is renowned for offering top-notch coaxial connectors, cables, and cable assemblies. Their products are used in a wide range of applications, including telecoms, broadcast, sound engineers, planes, and vehicle tracking.

Recently, we had an insightful conversation with Simon Tye, owner, and manager at Gigatronix, who shared how his team found a perfect email solution to enhance their communication and collaboration.

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The Challenges

Gigatronix was well aware of the value of team collaboration and communication. They used Highrise in the past, which allowed them to link threads. However, Highrise ceased development leaving Gigatronix searching for a new solution. They needed a tool that went beyond simple email.

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The Solution

After a long search, Gigatronix discovered Missive through a blog. Missive offered a hybrid of email communication and collaboration. It facilitated the flow of information from start to finish. Gigatronix could create team inboxes, assign tasks, automate processes with rules, and have a more efficient method of tracking communication and coordination.

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The Benefits

Gigatronix saw numerous benefits after implementing Missive. Communication and collaboration were quicker, clearer, and less prone to miscommunication and misunderstandings. Missive let all their teams monitor multiple inboxes, assign tasks, and rely on rules to automate processes, saving time and ensuring that nothing fell through the cracks. Here’s the complete conversation we had with Simon.

What challenges led you to look for a solution like Missive?

We chose Missive because we primarily knew what we were looking for:

1. Collaboration
2. Coordination
3. Process control
4. Process visibility

Previously we were using a product called Highrise. It was giving us the ability to link threads from product design and production into our quality control bubble. We were using Highrise for customer queries, sales orders, and product development as well. We loved it because you had a thread, and you could look at conversations either from the customer or the supplier. Conversations were organized by topics and were grouped in one place. The emails were there with the comments and the linked documents.

But, they just stopped doing it. So the need for us was born by the fact that they stopped developing Highrise. We'd moved away from just plain emails for quite some time. The system we were using was pretty good, but then it got disappointing, then it stopped. So, in effect, we knew what we wanted. We couldn't find it until we found Missive. And Missive did that. It's a hybrid of emailing and communication in general, plus integration with other stuff.

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How did you find out about Missive?

Bruce (owner and Simon’s colleague) was looking for something to replace Highrise. We saw lots of different email solutions, but a lot of them were called CRM and were project-based. They were driven by a contract record or a customer record, and the email was integrated.

Whereas we wanted something where communication, process, and coordination is the key to everything. Bruce kept looking and researching until he came across some blog from Philippe and found about Missive. He then did a demo, and it was like: Ah, this is right, this is what I want. This isn't just an email, this is a discussion thread. It wasn't particularly difficult to pick it up because we knew what we wanted.

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How does Missive help you?

Missive makes it clearer by reducing the chance of miscommunication and misunderstanding. It also makes everything quicker with fewer clicks. Plus you can easily follow the tracks afterward. We're business to business, we're working with design people, so you have these questions that come through and you've gotta be able to follow it both ways back and link in your factories communications with your customers’ communications and know who's doing what next.

It's communication, coordination, and the flow of information from start to finish.

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Was setting up Missive difficult?

No, it wasn't hard at all. What was hard is not getting carried away with it and trying to do too much at once. We came from a place where we knew what we wanted in terms of collaboration, visibility, and cooperation between teams. We’re being driven by process:

What the objective was, who is doing what next, and why?

Missive is easy to understand, you've got your email inboxes on one side, you've got your discussions in the middle, and you also have integration on the right. If you're jumping from a basic email package, you're not gonna have to learn a different language about everything. You could almost have the choice of just replicating what you have.

You could follow the cow track. I mean, you wouldn't do it for long, only to start with. For example, if you've got Xavier in accounts and he's very cautious, very conservative, and he's very strict and he just wants simple emails. That's fine. Or you've got Philippe the dramatic salesman that wants to push sales. He wants to have a process and integrate it with Pipedrive. He can work in Missive as well. Just give him a different team, give him lots of fancy rules to do things with labels. Whereas Xavier's over there, he's just got an inbox and he's fine. But simultaneously, if Xavier's doing something and Philippe wants to see it because it's a new customer he can collaborate with Xavier in a conversation. "Do they pay their bills? I'm gonna start a project with them, are they worth talking to? Am I wasting my time?"

Please thoroughly explain how you use Missive.

We have multiple team inboxes:

1. Sales
2. Admin
3. Accounts
4. Payroll
5. IT
6. Production
7. Packaging
8. Quality

So quite a few teams. People are in the teams so it comes into their inbox or their monitored inbox. They have the stack of inboxes that they monitor or have pinned somewhere down the team inboxes to show.

An assignment is a key trigger to knowing who's doing what next, and who's responsible for carrying that forward. So you'll be in a team and then you'll be assigned.

Most of the teams have everybody. But what defines it primarily as the sales team or the admin team is the active people in the team. So when it comes to the sales team, it's the salespeople that are active so they see it in their inbox but I can also see it. At the same time, I don't wanna see sales in my inbox and the same applies to them, they don't wanna see admin in their inbox. But for example, somebody might come into the sales inbox with remittance advice paying us money, they just assign it to admin.

Now if it happens a lot, of course, we'd write a rule, but we don't want rules proliferating just for one particular customer.

Everybody multitasks in multiple teams, but when you're in the sales team, you have a sales hat on and you're doing a particular thing. So the processes follow a different route. The expectation of the other team members in that is for something to serve the customer in the sales box.

The team is actually a more traditional name for the sales department, but it doesn't mean department. It means the sales process.

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What are the features you rely the most on?

We use rules; If you want to assign, if you want to label, if you want to change your label, if you want to change an assignment, if you want to put a comment in there. All those things and much more can just be done by a triggered event. Which is way beyond your email client, isn't it?

There will be some things that are picked up and labeled. Our non-conformances have a process being labeled and assigned. It will automatically assign or put a comment in there, or automatically label it. An assignment is important to us, but a lot of things around labels, and comments, are more automated than assignments.

We have a lot of labels and rules. Some rules are used for label changing or to execute an action when a process is done. We've got 143 rules company-wide. Maybe 20% is the process flow, and another 30% is ownership meaning assigned to someone. The other portion is user actions to actually do something. It should be absolutely obvious what has been done, who's done it, and what they expect to achieve. Quite often it’s just a basic line that is automatically put in the conversation. It makes absolutely obvious what happened when you scroll through them.

Many of us have our own personal rules as well. Missive works in a completely private way with your private email account, and you have your own rules that you don't share with anybody else it can work within a team, which can be either related to your email address or a role that you have in a team.

You've added features without adding clutter. You have a lot of features now, but it's not like a Microsoft product which has 50,000 features, of which you only use 200.

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Since using Missive, have you noticed improvements in your workflows?

We picked up Missive, it satisfied what we were looking for.

We were hungry for this collaboration between production, purchasing, sales, and admin. So Missive helps.

If you're coming to Missive from just a Gmail inbox, and Gmail's really good, or just a POP3 mailbox, it will change your business. Missive is a great solution if you are interested in coordinating with a team, even in the same room because people go on holiday and get sick.

I think if there's more than one of you in the business, you're benefiting!

You must have people that are frustrated with their inbox, which is most people, but they just grind on and think

Oh, it's just the way it is. I'll come home from holiday and there'll be 500 emails.

Well, not necessary, because, with Missive, your colleagues, and your teams can see it and they'll assign it themselves and they'll just assign you the ones or @ you, in it so you can comment.

You have to go through your inbox for two hours on your first morning back, you’ve done no work at all and you've got no idea what's important either.