How NetEase used SoWork to increase monthly revenue

The Problem

NetEase is a rapidly growing game development company. They have a distributed team working remotely across North America, spanning 4 time zones.

Nate LaMartina, the Technical Art Director at their North American team, was worried about his team's ability to achieve their goals.

Nate had loaded his team up with the best remote team tools he could find. Integrations, AI summaries, analytics, culture tools... you name it, if he'd heard of it, they'd tried it.

But it didn't seem to matter. His team would set goals, have the resources he thought they needed to achieve them, and yet not be able to achieve them. And in NetEase's world, that meant they were missing revenue goals.

He took a step back and decided to dig into the problem. And when he did, he realized what was happening: his remote team wasn't functioning like a team at all.

His team members expressed feelings of loneliness and isolation. Connecting, they said, was just so hard. They'd send a message and not hear back for a day or more. If they were really blocked, they'd set up a meeting, but the calendars were always full or lacking overlap time.

When I started digging in, I found out that days or even weeks could go by without teammates seeing each other. That's insane.

So, ya, our team wasn't collaborating. But it was more than that. They weren't spending any time together, period. No wonder we didn't feel like a team.

With team engagement and collaboration down, the NetEase team wasn't able to meet their goals. Nate now understood what the problem was, and set out to find a solution.

The Solution

Nate found SoWork and moved his team into their own office immediately. They focused first on taking all of their meetings in their new SoWork office. Daily stand-ups, weekly 1:1s and all-hands meetings.

As they started using SoWork, something amazing happened.

Teammates lingered in the office between meetings. They spent time decorating their desks, and bumped into coworkers they hadn't chatted with in a long time. Nate even saw teammates playing games between meetings.

SoWork eliminated loneliness. It was incredible. Once we got everyone in the same room, their natural human tendencies to connect and collaborate came out.

As the team felt more connected, they naturally collaborated more. Work was getting unblocked, teams were ideating and solving problems together, and projects were getting shipped on time.

And to Nate's relief, they started hitting their revenue goals.

How NetEase Uses SoWork

The NetEase team logs into their SoWork office at the start of each day so they can work beside each other. It is now a core part of the cadence of their week.

Every teammate has a desk that they've customized, giving each person a feeling of being a part of the office. Teammates work from their desks or one of the functional zones intentionally placed around the office that signal to others what they're up to. Deep work zones, pomodoro sprint spots, or break areas give the NetEase team collaborative places to work.

Throughout the day, they move seamlessly between deep work, scheduled meetings, spontaneous collaboration, and socialization. Teammates leverage availability and status features to communicate when they're around, and use chat and memos to connect with teammates when they're not ready for a quick chat.

SoWork's ability to mimic the best part's of the office in digital form is incredible. It's simple, natural, and human. I never thought our days could feel like this while remote.

The NetEase team was also delighted to leverage SoWork's Premium productivity features. They were able to cancel their AI summaries, recording and chat tools because SoWork's experience met their needs and reduced tool complexity.

Every meeting is summarized by SoWork's 'Sophya Bot'. The team especially loves the ability to quickly catch up on meeting summaries on their mobile devices. With their distributed team, this cuts out a lot of extra meetings and back-and-forth trying to stay up-to-date.

Conclusion

More than anything else, SoWork has provided me with a space to effortlessly communicate with my team.

I can pop in to say hello, they can stop by and ask me an opinion, or we can simply talk a bit without it feeling forced or planned.

SoWork has given me a more intimate connection to all my direct reports, and I (as well as others) can see the positive results that come out of this, both in their attitude towards me and the work they produce.

I am so happy to have found this app!

SoWork brought about improved collaboration and communication to the NetEase team, directly changing culture for the better. Teammates were no longer feeling disconnected and isolated. Relationships between the NetEase team could be built and maintained more easily. Productivity increased and the financial goal accomplishment followed.