Facebook announced today that Workplace by Facebook has reached two million paid users, after launching just over two years ago in October 2016. This milestone has not been achieved just because Workplace is easy to use and empowers people to connect more easily with mobile-first apps that finally address the "deskless" worker who has never had access to software that connects them with their organizations.  

The real reason Workplace is succeeding is because customers are achieving outcomes as a direct result of using Workplace. Companies are saving time, reducing costs, and increasing revenue. In one specific example, Starbucks says that by using Workplace it has been able to launch a new product in 24 hours, a process that used to take several weeks. 

That is a big deal. 

That is the power of connecting employees.

In some ways, we anticipated results like this could be achieved. That is why we signed up as a Workplace customer in early 2016 during the pilot phase. We had our entire company using it within a week. That might seem fast, but at ServiceRocket our business is software adoption, so we know a thing or two about how to rollout new software successfully. Soon after our own launch, we joined the Workplace partner program and started helping organization rollout Workplace.

Connecting truly global organizations

As we starting helping organizations adopt Workplace, it became apparent how important Workplace would be in connecting truly global organizations. Our CEO, Rob Castaneda, wrote a Linkedin post describing why Workplace would win, foreshadowing today's announcement.

Rob described a broken professional world in which the white collar employees are disconnected from the blue collar employees because enterprise software has never been designed with the remote, in-the-field, blue collar, "deskless," worker in mind.

Workplace has changed all of this.

That's why global organizations like Walmart, AstraZeneca, Telefonica, Nestle, and Delta Airlines use Workplace. These organizations are realizing they can now connect ALL of their employees, including and especially "deskless" workers.

Do the "deskless" workers, who also don't have email addresses, have access to other software tools in organizations?

Unlikely.

But with Workplace, they can.   

Workplace is the new interface

What makes Workplace even more compelling for these global organizations is the growing list of applications that can be integrated into Workplace, which is becoming the new interface into many of the other software tools employees use at work. For example, why go to your companies help desk system (Jira, for example) to submit an IT request, when you can just type your request into your company's IT Group in Workplace. That post automatically creates an issue in the help desk system. And the person posting in Workplace can follow the status through the comments of that post. 

Just think about how easy that makes it for employees to get help. 

Employee experience matters. 

Workplace apps that improve the employee experience

ServiceRocket has developed several apps for Workplace, including:

Workplace Connector for Jira: This app connects Workplace and Jira so that posts in Workplace can turn into issues in Jira and status updates and comments from Jira can be automatically sent to Workplace comments. Employees now don't need to log into Jira in order to submit issues. They can do it directly from Workplace. 

Moderate: Allows organizations to track keywords in Workplace so as to monitor activity and stop inappropriate language from being used and to keep conversations professional and civil. 

Org Chart: An easy to navigate view of your organization structure. 

Safety Officer: A Workplace app for tracking employee safety. Companies like Hive, Bel Group, and Delta Airlines have used Safety Officer to support the safety of their employees around the world. 

ServiceRocket is proud to be a Workplace customer and a global services partner.