Photo by Markus Spiske

What we did during the Pandemic – the Team CloudSource Journal

Disease.  Disaster.  Disruption. Never before seen on such a scale. Then came enforced solitude- the Lockdown.

Brian Solis (May, 2020), digital anthropologist and evangelist defined it as a watershed moment. So, what should businesses do? To invest during and post-Covid 19 seemed a painful mockery.                                                                                                   

His startling answer - Invest in the intangibles; empathy, emotional intelligence, compassion and benevolence.  To make these tangible, Solis explained that industry had to care for their employees and customers needs, challenges and future aspirations even more than before.

With regards to the how, in the Novel Economy, Solis boldly proposed - be creative, be experimental, be bold, be agile, be swift, be broad, be digital and above all else, be human!

These are the things Team CloudSource actually did during the Pandemic.                                            In retrospect, we are relieved that what we did was aligned to the expert view expressed by Solis.

Briefly, we set about doing these 10 things.

1. We cared
2. We shared
3. We strategized
4. We actually hired!
5. We revamped our website
6. We created Blogs and Apps
7. We looked for Partnerships
8. We updated remote working legalities
9. We learn, unlearn and relearn. We updated with Tech skills and online courses
10. We looked at people’s needs post Covid-19 lockdowns

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto

We cared

We CARE and work hard, anywhere – that’s Team CloudSource’s values. (check our website!)

We were given a chance to actually test this. We so proudly espoused this on our website. Then, we woke up one day, and found that national, even global lock-downs were declared.

Now it was truly anywhere - as long as you stayed put at home (Mi Casa)! It was sheer luck that none of the Team was travelling at that moment. We had seen the storm clouds rolling in and stayed close to home and family.

With a world in chaos, perhaps it was these words that kept the Team together. We had claimed we are Committed and Customer-centric, Agile, deliver Rapid-results and will constantly Endeavour!

Looking after our own remote employees, HR rapidly networked with other professional

s on-line. Now we have up-dated much critical legality related to Remote employees and their safety. This is a dire necessity as we are borderless and must comply with local regulations.

We shared

People were hit by an economic crisis. Countless problems and stories of struggles emerged every day.

We offered free consultations to start-ups and business owners. Tips on how to survive the Pandemic and strategies Post- pandemic. We supported our customers.  Some essential industries survived and thrived. The Creative Arts felt the blow most. Yet many gallantly went online with their video versions and productions. Remember the proverbial starving Artists? Well, not quite! Anyway here is the story of

one whom we helped. Yet she in turn only wished to share her book (for free!) with children who might be sad during these trying times.

We did this and more. Using all the skills from HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing, we published an article on LinkedIn that also featured her many Acrylics on canvas originals. Of course, her Flipbook Beautiful, Ugly Art  on LinkedIn and Facebook was featured (free download) and we recorded 150 hits in 3 days!

Remember, “Our mission is to differentiate you from the competition". So first we needed to differentiate ourselves from the rest. Heck - Do you know of any other SaaS company that dreams of dabbling in the Art Industry?

With visitor numbers plunging, Art Galleries will be a niche area (Blue Ocean Strategy?) we will explore. We think it is ripe for Inbound Marketing, with the bigger galleries perhaps being great prospects suitable for the entire HubSpot CRM suite.

Actually, when under lockdown, this was our small attempt at CSR.

The spunky founders of Team CloudSource revisited their budgets and needs. Their conversations whizzed across continents via Zoom, Slack, and WhatsApp.  Then we broke down the sales and marketing process and removed any type of friction. Besides that, we shared our family ups and downs and coping with the new norms

We actually hired!

Yup. That we did. A content writer, a tele-marketer, a  remote administrator and now we’re on the lookout for a techy youngster to man the forts – the LinkedIn, Facebook, twitter, Instagram and the works. Anyone interested?

We have faith in our abilities and the Law of Attraction.

The world was sad and we empathized. This was not the time for sales pitches or marketing.

This was a time to help and serve. The spunky founders made a difficult decision. We took down our website. We moved into a parallel dimension. Under re-construction.

This time, the website optimization and overall web strategy was built around the audience’s needs.

Working with a clunky, wordy 10,453 site, we revitalize, re-energized and revised.                     

Launched on 1^st July 2020, welcome to a brand new site with a spiffy new look!                 

But we’re not done yet! We’ll migrate from WordPress to Hubspot before you can say Team CloudSource!

We created Blogs

Welcome to blog articles that go beyond SEO’s and SEM’s. If even AI and crawlers can detect intent over content, we are not about keyword stuffing! We do not want to insult the intelligence of our readers and resort to mere click bait.

Time - ours and yours is too precious.   We educate, we show, and then we let you choose.  Some may complain that it is overwhelming. No problem for us.  We are authentic and we find it simple.                      Really, it is merely the convergence of  ethical business, good writing and being human.

Not B2B but H2H (humans to humans).

During a crisis we did not want to come across as insensitive, or just plain rude. Brian Solis, stated that “Great content, every step of the way, reminds people that you’re listening, that you care and that you’re there to add value”.

We formed Partnerships

Reaching out and networking during the lock-down, we partnered with Aircall, one of the best cloud-based phone systems available. It sports a virtual telephony solution which works seamlessly with all the other tools we love best.

We define ourselves as a bespoke company.

Rahul Raj, Founder and CMO of 5&Vine helps start-ups and defines it as “Challengers are defined not by their size, but by their aim to upend the status quo -- to deliver both profit and purpose, and recognize the role of business to act in the best interest of society.”

His mission is to enable a new breed of start-ups that challenge the status quo. Hey – that’s us. He nailed it.

We updated remote working legalities

As a borderless Team, HR put together these new proposals in order to regulate and cope with compliance. We updated our remote working policies to integrate with the new and rapid changes in the market. Our team researched and collaborated with industry experts to update ourselves using modern ways of working style and formats. 

We Learn, Unlearn and Relearn.

When the Pandemic was in full force, the world of Education poured valuable content online. And with empathy that will be always remembered, offered free online learning.

Coursera, EdX and OpenLearn had long been online but now the prestigious Ivy-leagues were there too!

Team CloudSource dived straight into Hubspot Academy and picked up relevant badges. As we simply adore technology, some plunged into tech courses for data analytics and reports as well. And we dipped into the fun learning courses along with our kids too!

We updated our Tech Stack

It was not just digital Automation, now it was Beyond Digital Automation! Breathless, we are lucky we had time to read and learn.

We updated our tech stack to improve the teams' overall productivity and efficiency. For emails we switched to G-Suite which allowed our team to communicate with customers more often and easily. For internal communication we moved from Whats App to Slack as it provided a better and sophisticated way for the teams to collaborate with each other more efficiently.

For task and project management, we actually started using HubSpot's projects tool which we find to be a very useful tool when all of your team is working remotely, it provided us with the opportunity to keep everything with in our CRM for any new projects we were working on Or for any upcoming projects planning discussion.

We looked at people’s needs post Covid-19

Right now schools are re-opening across many nations (the lucky ones). Parents are even more concerned about the safety of their children than they were before. There is a string of SOP that the children need to obey in school. But all hell may break loose as soon as they step into the School Bus!

Trackify Apps may be the answer to this dilemma. It allows school van drivers to keep track of each child's temperature reading into an app. The drivers must follow all the SOP's provided in the Trackify driver app to ensure safety and security for all the children on the bus.

TrackifyApp is going to be launching during the 1st quarter of 2021 in Malaysia. We are confident that this app will change how school admins, parents, and school transporters communicate with each other.