Set to revolutionize the HR tech space with AI powered Personal Assistants integrated into corporate intranets
“Logging into my firm’s intranet after browsing external websites is like taking a detour onto a dirt track from a 4 lane express highway and getting stuck in the sludge”
“The first thing I do when I log in at work is to open either Facebook, Youtube or a News portal. Though the default homepage is that of my company’s intranet, I find it neither exciting nor work efficiently for me to execute my tasks”
Hearing statements like these from professionals working in some of India’s reputed MNCs made Coimbatore based Digital workplace enthusiast and SharePoint maverick – Suprej Venkat to venture into the space of Collaborative technology with Hubfly, a digital workplace enabling startup.
Incorporated in October 2016 and headquartered in San Francisco with an office in Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu, India), Hubfly is a bootstrapped venture co-founded by Suprej along with Microsoft exponent and tech entrepreneur Saravana Kumar. The start-up operates in the collaborative technology space with an enthusiastic team of 25 professionals who are primed to deliver a great intranet experience.
Hubfly empowers enterprises with an intranet integrated with intelligent business apps that not just facilitate workforce efficiency but also automate business processes resulting in time and cost savings
Hubfly helps business enterprises leverage the collaborative power of SharePoint that comes bundled with Microsoft Office 365. While the over 100 million global Office 365 commercial subscribers form the target market for Hubfly’s Intranet, the big business opportunity lies in the estimation that barely 25% of these subscribers have the know-how of using SharePoint for the purpose of workforce collaboration.
Why Hubfly sees the Intranet as an integral part of an organization’s Digital Workplace Strategy?
“The Intranet, as we at Hubfly see, is no longer a ‘One-to-Many’ internal communications medium as it used to be. It has evolved into a business productivity tool that has the potential of helping businesses improve their time and cost efficiency besides keeping their millennial heavy workforce engaged“, observes Suprej, outlining his venture’s rationale.
“We believe that the Intranet is central to an organization’s digital workplace strategy. At this stage of our business, we are focusing our efforts in driving home the potential benefits of a dynamic intranet amongst our prospective customers across the globe. We help them build a strong business case to invest in a collaborative intranet.“, he adds.
Hubfly’s Revenue Model
Hubfly has adopted a per user monthly billing revenue model.
The business edition of its product is priced at $10 per user / month and constitutes a customizable intranet platform and integrated business productivity apps for automating processes such as Time Sheets, Meeting Room Booking, Service request, Holiday request, Asset Management etc.
Artificial Intelligence: The next inflection in HR tech?
Hubfly is now working on a premium edition which will offer an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered personal assistant to every employee on the Hubfly intranet in addition to the features in the business edition.
“The best part is these personal assistants will communicate with various third party apps like Quickbooks, HubSpot, JIRA, etc. to pull all requisite information an employee needs. This could range from knowing which meeting room is free at a particular time to availing real-time data on the number of leads or even the status of a company’s finances.” points out Suprej. “This is how we see the near future of Digital Workplaces and at Hubfly, we have already started building these engines” he tells.
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Helping Businesses Overcome Workplace Challenges
“Time +Cost Savings = Workforce Efficiency + Organizational Agility”
Hubfly as an Intranet Service is aimed at helping business organizations to benefit from time and cost savings.”, says Co-Founder Saravana Kumar.
Elucidating the value proposition, he adds,” They do not have to build an intranet from scratch, neither have to invest a lump sum nor have their intranet suffer from outmoded technology. Hubfly can be deployed within minutes, giving the users a customized user interface, a smart document search feature in addition to real time analytics and interactive business charts which improves workforce engagement and organizational efficiency.”
Market Macros
While at the global stage, Hubfly would be competing with the likes of Unily, Interact and Live Tiles, the Indian market seems devoid of players of note besides social intranet maker TriggerO. Global tech giants such as Facebook, Google and Amazon too have their skin in the collaborative technology game with FB Workplace, G-Drive and Amazon Chime besides communication services such as Slack, Yammer, Hipchat and Chatter.
Given that Hubfly’s Intranet is deployed on SharePoint for enterprises using Office 365 alone, it creates a different niche when compared to the tech majors listed above.
According to a 2016 report released by MarketsandMarkets.com, the enterprise collaboration market is estimated to grow from $ 26.68 Billion in 2016 to $ 49.51 Billion in 2021 at a CAGR of 13.2%.
Assuming Microsoft’s enterprise collaboration market share continued to hover at the 20% (as of 2015) mark until 2021, Hubfly would be likely looking at a billion dollar business opportunity to yield fruit.
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