January 5, 2024
Conclude went through some big changes in 2023, and we already have some significant goals set for 2024. In this post, we take a look at some of the highlights of the year. Let’s dive in.
What Was the Hottest Topic of 2023?
With all the discussion around Artificial Intelligence, many people felt quite fatigued by this topic (and for good reason).
According to Statista, Between June 2022 and March 2023, the keyword search term “AI” increased from almost 8 million monthly searches to over 30 million. The reality is, of course, that AI will transform the way we do business – and this is just the beginning.
Like many companies, in 2023 Conclude invested in this area, developing and integrating AI into our no-code workflow apps with a focus on ticketing for incidents, issues, support tickets and bug tracking inside Slack.
The Cost of Context Switching
Tackling the issue of context switching was high on the list in 2023. Data shows that frequently switching between tools, tasks, and topics leads to a loss of focus and momentum. A Harvard Business Review report revealed that knowledge workers spend around four hours per week switching between apps – time that could be spent on other tasks.
The additional cognitive strain makes it especially challenging for Help Desk, Support and Engineering Teams to complete tasks quickly and effectively. The outcome? A backlog of unresolved issues, longer response times, and reduced performance.
AI Integrations for Conversational Ticketing
AI-driven integrations for email summarization and language translation were added to Conclude Apps in March. These integrations help teams to speed up ticket resolution and response times by summarizing and automatically opening tickets inside Slack.
“Teams saved >1 min per email when opening a support ticket with Conclude’s Email Summarization AI Integration.” (Source: Conclude White Paper: Optimizing Incident Management and Support)
Our AI integration with email translation capabilities in up to 60 languages also meant that teams could reply to customer emails directly from Slack in their preferred language. This feature alone eliminated the need for toggling between different programs, leading to faster response times.
Want to know more? See our blog on Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for IT Support and Help Desk Teams or get more insights and download our white paper Optimizing Incident Management and Support here.
The Launch of Conclude Link: Connecting Slack and Teams
According to Demand Sage, the number of Slack daily active users (DAUs) in 2023 was estimated to be around 32 million, with those on Microsoft Teams estimated at around 280 million.
However, it’s also not uncommon to see some parts of an organization using Teams, while other departments prefer Slack. This collaboration gap is often seen in IT and Product or Development teams that prefer specific workflows and integrations in Slack, while the rest of the company uses Teams to communicate.
One of Conclude’s pillars is to help companies improve collaboration and break down interdepartmental silos, so at the end of June we launched Conclude Link – a solution that connects Microsoft Teams and Slack for seamless, two-way communication. We added file sharing and automatic translation in up to 60 languages in September.
Conclude Link is part of Conclude Apps and we have even more features and integrations planned for 2024.
Read our blog posts Conclude Link: Connecting Slack and Microsoft Teams and Conclude Link Adds Language Translation and File Sharing for more.
We Secured More Seed Funding To Keep Building
Towards the end of Summer, Conclude secured more seed funding from 14 investors to keep developing the company’s suite of collaboration tools. The total raise was 7.2 million NOK and will fund the company into 2024.
Conclude Opens an Office in Palo Alto
In November, Conclude established an office in Palo Alto through its Nordic connections in Silicon Valley. The Bay Area is well-known to Conclude’s co-founders, Haavard and Marianne Nord, who both spent time there while scaling Qt – Haavard’s previous company, which was acquired by Nokia in 2008.
In a LinkedIn post, Haavard spoke about his return to the Bay Area after 15 years:
What’s in Store for 2024?
Conclude is exploring new opportunities for collaboration and growth with different companies and teams. As well as forming an Advisory Board, product development is strong with several important integrations and product enhancements on the way.
Conclude’s CEO, Haavard, explains: “Conclude continues its mission to become the preferred collaboration platform for teams of any size, while delivering special value in the area of conversational ticketing and help desk support.
“Expect to see more from Conclude in the areas of AI and Microsoft Teams integrations in 2024, as well as an easier way to communicate and collaborate with teams external to your organization.”
