Not just a tool, but a Mindset: Winkwaves & Harmonizer

Over the last few years, we have been building business with the talented crew at Winkwaves. They are in the business of social intranet, and have their own platform, Harmonics (what’s in a great name? We ask).

Winkwaves are of the mindset: “it’s more than a tool, it’s a mindset”. As they explain on their website, they go beyond just delivering software. They want to make sure their software works for the client. They invest in implementing it properly and getting people on the journey. They distinguish themselves from other intranet platforms, by emphasising and enabling collaboration and knowledge sharing through Harmonics and its functionality.

Partnership

This philosophy is close to our hearts. We sometimes wonder at today’s pressures and relentless focus on making a quick buck this month or this quarter. Thinking about getting clients in the right mindset and perhaps assisting them to optimise processes will take more time at the outset and might not be so profitable this month, but will lead to a robust and trusted relationship down the track. Which will lead to better business outcomes on both sides, if you know what we mean.

And since Winkwaves have a relentless focus on delivering their social intranet platform exceptionally well, they made the choice to not focus on matters that aren’t at the core of this. Integrations and data migrations being two of those areas.

Scarcity

The world is a place of scarcity. In no field does this hold more than in software development. Methods like SCRUM and Agile were born out of this need. The labour market for software developers was always tight, and now more so than ever, with the Great Resignation happening before our eyes. The war on talent has never been so real. This means that development budgets are under more pressure than ever before. Focus is essential.

By partnering with Harmonizer, Winkwaves don’t need to worry about integrating their Harmonics platform with other systems for their clients. In addition, they don’t have to worry about developing and maintaining any code for these integrations. The same goes for migrating data across from previous intranets or other sources, into their social intranet platform. The Harmonizer platform has efficiently and effectively taken care of that on many occasions.

In turn, we have a relentless focus on integrations. Rather than building code for bespoke client cases, our generic platform re-uses code across our client base, including the code blocks that are specific to other applications. This means we can invest in building and maintaining this code at the highest level of functionality as part of our niche offering to the market. Allowing the code to be moulded to service bespoke client needs.

This allows us to offer integrations at an affordable monthly fee as we can amortise our development cost across many clients. A win-win-win for the client (less expenditure), our partners (more growth and satisfied clients) and us (our business flourishes too).

~#Hypergrowth

This means Winkwaves’ developers are freed up to spend a lot more time on improving the social intranet platform. This is not just a tactical play, to make budgets and ends meet. It is a strategic play. Winkwaves are focused on developing their ecosystem - not unlike some great market players like SalesForce. The idea is to completely open the platform to external parties and allow for a great deal of flexibility, so that other players in the ecosystem can add value by developing many different solutions for many different client cases. This increases the number of use cases for Winkwaves’ platform dramatically.

This allows Winkwaves to grow much faster than they would have been able to do if they had to write every piece of fringe code themselves, or close off their platform in terms of documentation or flexibility. Responding to their customers’ functionality demands fast and well has propelled and enabled their prosperous journey over the last 15 years.

One of the key decisions underpinning the ecosystem view, was developing an open API. Winkwaves did this as early as seven years ago, in 2014. This enabled partners such as us, to develop code that flawlessly works with the Harmonics platform and delivers value to our mutual client base every day.

Client cases

The initial joint client cases centred around recruitment and Human Resources (HR) processes. The Harmonics social intranet needed to connect with applicant tracking systems and HR platforms, as well as job boards.

With Winkwaves’ passion for enabling organisations to socially collaborate, anything to do with ‘people’ was an extra unique selling point for them. Being able to convince clients with these unique selling points is quite important in Winkwaves’ market, since there is a lot of competition in the (social) intranet space.

As Winkwaves grew, so did their client base. Aside from HR integrations, client cases focused more and more around migrating data off old platforms and onto Harmonics. Formatting, pictures, bespoke structures, non-standard data formats, nested files. Because of our robust partnership, we at Harmonizer have a solid understanding of how Harmonics works. This allows us to distinguish the best way of approaching these challenges, as there are often multiple solutions available. Therefore, we can transition all this data and information seamlessly and with the end-user in mind - a great advantage to both the client and Winkwaves.

The future

Winkwaves’ focus on the Harmonics core functionality as well as collaboration and knowledge sharing paid dividends during COVID. Employers were, and are, struggling to keep the workforce connected and engaged, and in many cases, a social intranet is one of the solutions to this problem. Winkwaves rode this wave well (pun intended), and it has further bolstered their growth.

For Winkwaves and us, it has opened up new joint opportunities and growth in the space of social collaboration, turning our focus to bolster communities in the broader sense of the word. There is an increased demand for online, flexible and growing communications platforms, a niche that is best supported by Winkwaves in combination with Harmonizer for seamless connections.

We are proud to be partnering with Winkwaves, and look forward to many more fruitful years of working together as one team for our clients!

Image on Pixaby by Tumisu