Chris Day had made it very clear he was done with startups and the entire process of building companies from the ground up.

He’d already done that and he was the driving force behind some of the top technology solutions in the managed service provider (MSP) space.

Early in his career, he founded Fully Managed—a managed cloud services and cybersecurity provider. He scaled the business from a one-man IT consultancy to one of Canada's largest and most respected MSPs with over 150+ managed customers and 12,000+ users globally. In fact, it was recently 

A decade later, he founded his own early-stage investment firm, Top Down Ventures, and just months later, IT Glue—an award-winning IT documentation platform. After five years of growing IT Glue, he made a 

 via sale to Insight Venture Partners and Kaseya.

Just two years into scaling IT Glue, he also co-founded Warranty Master (now ScalePad)—a platform that automates warranty quoting, purchasing, renewals and service requests for IT service providers.

At this point, Day was thinking it was time to take a step back and focus his passion and depth of experience on his role as an investor at Top Down.

“I’d served as the CEO of a company for more than a decade and a half and what I really wanted to do was help others succeed in that role,” he said.

But of course, 2020 had a way of throwing a wrench into some of the best laid plans. And when a perfectly timed opportunity came knocking, who was he not to answer the door?

Creating the solution to a glaring MSP problem

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, a blinding light was shone on the state of digital transformation and the entire 

 environment. Businesses were forced to speed up their technology evolutions by 

 to accommodate work-from-home mandates. And the challenges began to emerge.

Early in 2020, Day was approached by Joel Abramson and Mark Scott, Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Executive Officer of Fully Managed, respectively. They were seeing a wide-spread problem in the MSP space that was begging for a solution.

“In this remote-first work world that we're now in, we have no idea what people are doing, if they're productive or if they’re delivering any kind of results—it’s just painful," said Day.

That was the problem MSPs were feeling, and Day, Abramson and Scott all quickly agreed the solution was 

“The leaders of these companies just need to know what's going on,” said Day. “It's not that they need that information to crack the whip on people. It's more like they need to know what their people are doing so they can make better decisions on where their business is headed and what things they need to invest in.”

Despite not wanting to do another startup, Day knew this pervasive and growing problem was an opportunity he couldn’t ignore.

“We’re going to have to start a company,” he said to Abramson and Scott. “This is needed.”

Examining the digital work patterns of remote teams

You might have two remote sales reps at your company—one who’s great and one who’s...not, said Day.

“Could it be that the one who's not successful is sitting on a beach not doing anything? Maybe. But more likely they're both working and they're just doing different stuff,” he said.

Knowing the work habits of your remote team members and being able to identify which are the winning habits is incredibly valuable.

Seeing how your most successful employees structure their days in terms of app usage and work patterns enables you to understand exactly what’s working and then use that information to lift up the productivity and performance of the entire team.

“What we're trying to do with Produce8 is help companies understand the good stuff versus the bad stuff,” said Day. “It could be anything from, ‘this person blocks research time and this person doesn't' to ‘this person doesn't jump between 500 apps the entire day. They seem to have a pattern where they're more focused’.”

In fact, the goal might not even be to have direct conversations about the individual patterns that get recognized over time. Instead, the insights gained may become the catalyst for creating better training, improved processes and procedures, or even evolving the technology stack from a team or organizational perspective.

“An MSP goes and buys software and then literally has no idea if their people are using it for the next year,” said Day. “It's wild. We buy into this idea that it’s going to make us more productive or reduce our risk or increase our revenue.”

But how do we know if the software we’re investing in is actually delivering on those promises? And how do we know if our people are even using it?

“If a company finds they have a person who doesn't use their CRM at all, is it because they don't want to use it? Or, is it because they don't know how to?” said Day. “Again, we just want to know so that we can make better choices for the business."

These are the kinds of things Produce8 draws out for digital-first and 

Learn more about why we're building Produce8 and how we're helping remote and digital-first teams work better together.

Building better remote work environments with employee experience at the core

“The biggest ‘aha’ moment we've had since starting Produce8 is that the problem is so much wider and deeper than we thought,” he said.

Day, Abramson and Scott were initially very committed to launching Produce8 in the MSP space—an industry they know first-hand is struggling with challenges around remote and digital-first teams. And while they’re still committed to this initial launch direction, they also realize this has become a very common problem across 

“I don't think keeping Produce8 as a purely MSP-focused solution will do it justice,” said Day. “As we think about remote work patterns and where the modern work environment is headed, we realize this is a much bigger opportunity.”

 transparency is crucial for the future of work and business success. But ultimately, it’s the people at a company who drive it forward. Re-thinking the overall experience of the remote workplace environment with individual employee experience at the core will create wins that go well beyond the world of business.

Having deeper insight into where each team member is spending their time creates opportunities for them to make changes that will improve not only their work performance, but also their lives. Cultivating positive and productive work habits and learning how to work more effectively with team members—and with less digital distraction—leads to accomplishing the necessary output, but in less time.

Be among the first to create a more open and transparent digital work environment for you and your team.

And freed up time is invaluable. It allows for the restructuring of the workday in ways that actually work for real people.

“That's going to be the ultimate goal,” said Day. “The individual being able to take action based on assessing themselves and their personal work patterns. And if we get to that point, then we're really winning."

This article is the final in our three-part series on the founding and founders of Produce8: Chris Day, 

Chris Day had made it very clear he was done with startups and the entire process of building companies from the ground up.

He’d already done that and he was the driving force behind some of the top technology solutions in the managed service provider (MSP) space.

Early in his career, he founded Fully Managed—a managed cloud services and cybersecurity provider. He scaled the business from a one-man IT consultancy to one of Canada's largest and most respected MSPs with over 150+ managed customers and 12,000+ users globally. In fact, it was recently acquired by Telus.

A decade later, he founded his own early-stage investment firm, Top Down Ventures, and just months later, IT Glue—an award-winning IT documentation platform. After five years of growing IT Glue, he made a successful exit via sale to Insight Venture Partners and Kaseya.

Just two years into scaling IT Glue, he also co-founded Warranty Master (now ScalePad)—a platform that automates warranty quoting, purchasing, renewals and service requests for IT service providers.

At this point, Day was thinking it was time to take a step back and focus his passion and depth of experience on his role as an investor at Top Down.

“I’d served as the CEO of a company for more than a decade and a half and what I really wanted to do was help others succeed in that role,” he said.

But of course, 2020 had a way of throwing a wrench into some of the best laid plans. And when a perfectly timed opportunity came knocking, who was he not to answer the door?

Creating the solution to a glaring MSP problem

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, a blinding light was shone on the state of digital transformation and the entire digital workplace environment. Businesses were forced to speed up their technology evolutions by several years to accommodate work-from-home mandates. And the challenges began to emerge.

Early in 2020, Day was approached by Joel Abramson and Mark Scott, Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Executive Officer of Fully Managed, respectively. They were seeing a wide-spread problem in the MSP space that was begging for a solution.

That was the problem MSPs were feeling, and Day, Abramson and Scott all quickly agreed the solution was not a new kind of employee monitoring software.

“The leaders of these companies just need to know what's going on,” said Day. “It's not that they need that information to crack the whip on people. It's more like they need to know what their people are doing so they can make better decisions on where their business is headed and what things they need to invest in.”

Despite not wanting to do another startup, Day knew this pervasive and growing problem was an opportunity he couldn’t ignore.

“We’re going to have to start a company,” he said to Abramson and Scott. “This is needed.”

Examining the digital work patterns of remote teams

You might have two remote sales reps at your company—one who’s great and one who’s...not, said Day.

“Could it be that the one who's not successful is sitting on a beach not doing anything? Maybe. But more likely they're both working and they're just doing different stuff,” he said.

Knowing the work habits of your remote team members and being able to identify which are the winning habits is incredibly valuable.

Seeing how your most successful employees structure their days in terms of app usage and work patterns enables you to understand exactly what’s working and then use that information to lift up the productivity and performance of the entire team.

In fact, the goal might not even be to have direct conversations about the individual patterns that get recognized over time. Instead, the insights gained may become the catalyst for creating better training, improved processes and procedures, or even evolving the technology stack from a team or organizational perspective.

“An MSP goes and buys software and then literally has no idea if their people are using it for the next year,” said Day. “It's wild. We buy into this idea that it’s going to make us more productive or reduce our risk or increase our revenue.”

But how do we know if the software we’re investing in is actually delivering on those promises? And how do we know if our people are even using it?

“If a company finds they have a person who doesn't use their CRM at all, is it because they don't want to use it? Or, is it because they don't know how to?” said Day. “Again, we just want to know so that we can make better choices for the business."

These are the kinds of things Produce8 draws out for digital-first and remote teams that nobody's drawing out today.

Building better remote work environments with employee experience at the core

“The biggest ‘aha’ moment we've had since starting Produce8 is that the problem is so much wider and deeper than we thought,” he said.

Day, Abramson and Scott were initially very committed to launching Produce8 in the MSP space—an industry they know first-hand is struggling with challenges around remote and digital-first teams. And while they’re still committed to this initial launch direction, they also realize this has become a very common problem across every industry.

Enabling digital-first and remote work transparency is crucial for the future of work and business success. But ultimately, it’s the people at a company who drive it forward. Re-thinking the overall experience of the remote workplace environment with individual employee experience at the core will create wins that go well beyond the world of business.

Having deeper insight into where each team member is spending their time creates opportunities for them to make changes that will improve not only their work performance, but also their lives. Cultivating positive and productive work habits and learning how to work more effectively with team members—and with less digital distraction—leads to accomplishing the necessary output, but in less time.

And freed up time is invaluable. It allows for the restructuring of the workday in ways that actually work for real people.

“That's going to be the ultimate goal,” said Day. “The individual being able to take action based on assessing themselves and their personal work patterns. And if we get to that point, then we're really winning."

This article is the final in our three-part series on the founding and founders of Produce8: Chris Day, Joel Abramson and Mark Scott. 

Building a Remote Work Solution for MSP Teams and Beyond

Joel Abramson was sitting on a Zoom call with 12 CEOs from across various industries—a group of trusted folks he’d known for a long time. This was right at the beginning of the pandemic and people were settling into work-from-home mode.

“All of these CEOs went around the room and said to me, 'I just don't know what my people are doing’.”

They lamented over how they had no way of figuring out what work was being done and how productive their team members truly were. They needed a solution for their remote teams.

Abramson has worked in tech for more than 25 years, services provision for over a decade, and has been part of the tech venture-capital world for over a year. He currently serves as the Chief Strategy Officer at IT service management company Fully Managed, as well as a Partner at Top Down Ventures and the Chief Executive Officer at 

“Here's what you can do,” said Abramson.

 solution on the market that was the de-facto solution in the space.

“Install it on all your employees' machines and it will tell you everything they've done,” he told the group.

Responses ranged from, ’Are you f***ing kidding me?’ and, ‘I would never install something like that. That's spyware,’ to ‘I trust my employees’ and ‘that's why we have managers’.

“They all had these very visceral reactions to the whole concept of monitoring, and not a single one of them was willing to install it on their teams’ machines,” he said.

In the days following that meeting, six of the CEOs contacted Abramson to say that, while they didn’t like the particular software solution he’d mentioned, the problem still hadn’t been solved either. And did he have any other suggestions?

“My answer was ‘no’, but it was enough of a question for me to think, ‘well, how 

That’s when Chris Day and Mark Scott were brought into the fold.

Effectiveness is measured in outcomes, not hours worked

Abramson, Day and Scott began kicking around the idea of a solution that wouldn’t monitor exactly 

 employees were doing each day, but rather observe 

 they were spending their digital work time and what were the results?

“Individually, we knew it wasn’t about the time that goes into something that makes an employee successful,” said Abramson. “It’s about the outcomes.”

So the question became this: how would they take this problem of not knowing what 

 members were doing and create a solution that resulted in greater transparency, clearer operational awareness and higher team performance for remote workforces—without sacrificing the privacy of the individual?

An original concept name of Work4 was thrown around, inspired by Tim Ferriss’ 2007 book The 4-Hour Workweek.

“I think all of us calibrate our lives to be as effective as we can. We hate busy work, we hate bullshit work,” said Abramson. “That’s a common trait. The new-age worker is all about efficiency and work-life balance. ‘Where am I spending my time online and how does it impact my life and wellbeing’?”

That original name evolved to Produce8, inspired by the concept that, while we all aim to produce eight hours worth of output in a day, it doesn’t really matter how long it takes us to get there. If you can produce, in just four hours, the equivalent work that someone else does in eight, why should you work an additional four just to put in the time?

It’s about what you produce, not about how long you work.

Taking the work out of managing remote teams

“In every medium shift, the first thing you have to do is pull forward the norms of the last medium,” Abramson recalled hearing from an early conversation with a venture capitalist.

If we look at remote digital work as the new work medium, then we know we have to pull forward an understanding of time and how people are putting in their eight hours of output a day.

“In an office, you’d just look around. ‘Is John working today? He's not at his desk. Is he at the dentist, is he sick or is he just in the bathroom?’ So that's the first thing you're pulling forward in a distributed work environment.”

We’ve solved some of this already with remote communications applications and project management solutions. But of course, all of this requires inputs in order to see the outputs. It requires effort and updating and maintenance. It requires a burden on time and output potential.

We need a shift in the way we manage inputs and outputs for remote and digital-first teams.

“Produce8 automates the collection of data that already exists around the work being completed,” said Abramson. “This is the first step. Clear insight into where the work is being done and what our habits, patterns and workflows look like as digital-first teams."

"From there, we can start to find efficiencies, eliminate distractions and shift our focus to managing the outputs irrespective of the inputs."

The other necessary shift is a culture change.

“I think for the individual, the team and for the manager, creating an open work environment with transparency around what's happening in the day and what we’re doing with our days is something that still has to cross the chasm,” said Abramson.

He gave the example of tweeting for the first time.

There's anxiety around it because you know you're going to send a message out into the world that everybody can see. Entering into a transparent 

“You're hooking up your business applications to a system so everybody can see what you're doing in your workday. But, on the flip side, it’s helping solve the problem of operational awareness for all. You can’t expect your neighbor to do it without doing it yourself though.”

Produce8 is not purpose-built for spying on employees. In fact, it’s anti-monitoring. There are products to do that if that’s what you want.

Produce8 is purpose-built for solving the problem of digital team transparency, said Abramson.

“As the platform evolves, we’re committed to figuring out all the value that can be achieved around this, not just from a company perspective, but also from the perspective of remote teams and individuals.”

This article is the second in our three-part series on the founding and founders of Produce8: Joel Abramson, 

Joel Abramson was sitting on a Zoom call with 12 CEOs from across various industries—a group of trusted folks he’d known for a long time. This was right at the beginning of the pandemic and people were settling into work-from-home mode.

“All of these CEOs went around the room and said to me, 'I just don't know what my people are doing’.”

They lamented over how they had no way of figuring out what work was being done and how productive their team members truly were. They needed a solution for their remote teams.

Abramson has worked in tech for more than 25 years, services provision for over a decade, and has been part of the tech venture-capital world for over a year. He currently serves as the Chief Strategy Officer at IT service management company Fully Managed, as well as a Partner at Top Down Ventures and the Chief Executive Officer at Produce8—but we’ll get to that in a moment.

“Here's what you can do,” said Abramson.

He’d heard about an employee monitoring software solution on the market that was the de-facto solution in the space.

“Install it on all your employees' machines and it will tell you everything they've done,” he told the group.

The general consensus? Revulsion.

Responses ranged from, ’Are you f***ing kidding me?’ and, ‘I would never install something like that. That's spyware,’ to ‘I trust my employees’ and ‘that's why we have managers’.

In the days following that meeting, six of the CEOs contacted Abramson to say that, while they didn’t like the particular software solution he’d mentioned, the problem still hadn’t been solved either. And did he have any other suggestions?

“My answer was ‘no’, but it was enough of a question for me to think, ‘well, how are we going to solve this problem’?”

That’s when Chris Day and Mark Scott were brought into the fold.

Effectiveness is measured in outcomes, not hours worked

Abramson, Day and Scott began kicking around the idea of a solution that wouldn’t monitor exactly what employees were doing each day, but rather observe where they were spending their digital work time and what were the results?

So the question became this: how would they take this problem of not knowing what remote team members were doing and create a solution that resulted in greater transparency, clearer operational awareness and higher team performance for remote workforces—without sacrificing the privacy of the individual?

An original concept name of Work4 was thrown around, inspired by Tim Ferriss’ 2007 book The 4-Hour Workweek.

“I think all of us calibrate our lives to be as effective as we can. We hate busy work, we hate bullshit work,” said Abramson. “That’s a common trait. The new-age worker is all about efficiency and work-life balance. ‘Where am I spending my time online and how does it impact my life and wellbeing’?”

That original name evolved to Produce8, inspired by the concept that, while we all aim to produce eight hours worth of output in a day, it doesn’t really matter how long it takes us to get there. If you can produce, in just four hours, the equivalent work that someone else does in eight, why should you work an additional four just to put in the time?

It’s about what you produce, not about how long you work.

Taking the work out of managing remote teams

“In every medium shift, the first thing you have to do is pull forward the norms of the last medium,” Abramson recalled hearing from an early conversation with a venture capitalist.

If we look at remote digital work as the new work medium, then we know we have to pull forward an understanding of time and how people are putting in their eight hours of output a day.

“In an office, you’d just look around. ‘Is John working today? He's not at his desk. Is he at the dentist, is he sick or is he just in the bathroom?’ So that's the first thing you're pulling forward in a distributed work environment.”

We’ve solved some of this already with remote communications applications and project management solutions. But of course, all of this requires inputs in order to see the outputs. It requires effort and updating and maintenance. It requires a burden on time and output potential.

We need a shift in the way we manage inputs and outputs for remote and digital-first teams.

"From there, we can start to find efficiencies, eliminate distractions and shift our focus to managing the outputs irrespective of the inputs."

The other necessary shift is a culture change.

Purpose-built for collective awareness

“I think for the individual, the team and for the manager, creating an open work environment with transparency around what's happening in the day and what we’re doing with our days is something that still has to cross the chasm,” said Abramson.

He gave the example of tweeting for the first time.

There's anxiety around it because you know you're going to send a message out into the world that everybody can see. Entering into a transparent digital workplace is similar.

Produce8 is not purpose-built for spying on employees. In fact, it’s anti-monitoring. There are products to do that if that’s what you want.

Produce8 is purpose-built for solving the problem of digital team transparency, said Abramson.

“As the platform evolves, we’re committed to figuring out all the value that can be achieved around this, not just from a company perspective, but also from the perspective of remote teams and individuals.”

This article is the second in our three-part series on the founding and founders of Produce8: Joel Abramson, Chris Day and Mark Scott. 

Solving the Work Transparency Problem for Remote Teams

Early into the pandemic, there were a handful of companies that took very public and forward-thinking stances when it came to remote and hybrid work.

Shopify dubbed itself, ‘digital by default’. Twitter told its employees they could work from home ‘forever’. And Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said, “we’re not going back.”

The concept of the workplace had shifted for many, but not without questions and concerns.

“If we're moving to this digital-first work world, how do we, as a company, transition a thousand people to working from home and do it effectively?” said Mark Scott, CEO of managed service provider Fully Managed. 

Scott has been in the tech game for more than two decades. He founded and scaled N-able (NYSE:NABL)—a leader in IT technology solutions for managed service providers (MSPs)—that sold to Texas-based Solarwinds for $120M. It was subsequently spun-out separately and taken public. He then started his own MSP, TUC, which successfully merged with Fully Managed in 2018. Since the merger, he has helped grow the business’s revenue three-fold to $100M and its team from 150 people to north of 400. And most recently, he led the business through acquisition by Canadian communications giant, TELUS (NYSE:TU; TSX:T).

Needless to say, Scott has had a front-row seat to the surge of remote, hybrid and 

“There's this business problem that needs to be addressed first, but there’s an individual problem as well,” he said. 

“People need the right tools, technology and cyber security. You also want to develop a way to give them all the benefits of working in an office, but with the flexibility that remote work affords.”

The way Scott sees it, there are a few key pillars for the digital-first work world:

, which includes the technology tools as well as the services, support and security around that.

, including on-demand human resource service management and online learning management services and support.

 productivity and application utilization.

As COVID-19 progressed, most companies quickly cobbled together and adopted various solutions and 

 form of infrastructure to support work-from-wherever environments.

But there was a missing element that Scott couldn’t stop thinking about.

An operating system for the digital-first work world

How can owners, managers and teams gain a clear view of what everyone's actually doing, where they’re doing it and what they’re accomplishing in remote, hybrid and digital-first work environments?

Sure, there are tools for task-tracking, checking in and status updating—but those come at a cost. There’s a great deal of effort involved in keeping these solutions up-to-date, and the over-communication and over-burden quickly become overwhelming at all levels of a company.

How can we automate this process and create a better, more integrated digital infrastructure that supports transparent distributed digital-teamwork?

As it turned out, Scott’s co-worker Joel Abramson, the chief strategy officer at Fully Managed, had these same questions rolling around in 

 brain. And the answers could only be found in data no one was even collecting—yet.

Remote and digital-first employees spend their days interacting with, and working within, the various pieces of their companies’ technology infrastructures. So what can their activities tell us about their productivity and the effectiveness of their work patterns, both as individuals and as a collective?

Scott and Abramson brought their concept to Chris Day, Fully Managed founder/board member and CEO of investment firm 

. Day quickly took the idea to another level, incubating the concept into reality, then tapping one of his Top Down “top guns” Ryan McGinnis to build out the strategy and product development team. From there, this missing piece of the 

 operating system evolved, grew legs and became a whole lot more than just a concept. It became a company they called 

While the team was interested in surfacing data around remote, hybrid and digital-first teamwork patterns, the individual use-case potential became clear as well.

“With Produce8, a person can start to look and say, ‘here's what my work activity stream looks like’,” said Scott. “‘I think I was really productive today. So what does that look like in terms of the applications I've used and how much time I spent on them?’ And what were the outcomes?”

This is the personal productivity analytics piece of the platform. Individuals have the ability to look across all the applications they use in a day and really understand their typical workflow.

“From there, you can start to extend it to the team,” he said.

Where's the team spending time as a whole across the entire technology stack? And what’s being accomplished collectively?

“It’s a way of making sure we’re productive individually, we’re productive from an overall team standpoint, and ultimately this will benefit the company as well.”

How can we do remote, hybrid and digital-first work better?

“I think we all know digital-first is not going away,” said Scott, “and I think we all know many people are more productive working from home.”

Having a platform that clearly shows remote individual and team workflow dynamics as well as the measurable outcomes being accomplished simplifies and streamlines the management of this entire environment.

“The exciting thing for me is really getting to have a single source of truth to understand what people's productivity really is,” he said.

With Produce8, individuals can view their workdays with a more critical eye to ensure they’re making the best use of their valuable time. If you have a clear timeline of everything you do and accomplish in a day then you can spot your inefficiencies and work toward producing the same output in less time.

Produce eight hours of output in...however long it takes, and no more than that.

Teams can use this productivity data source to not only reach goals collectively, but also shift individual strategies based on how other team members are seeing success. All for one, and one for all.

In an office setting, this kind of collaborative learning and idea-sharing might happen more organically. In a remote or 

 environment, open and transparent digital teamwork makes this possible while simultaneously avoiding the more negative forms of in-office co-worker distraction.

And from a managerial perspective? This platform provides some much-needed visibility into where teams are spending their time and what they’re accomplishing—without the continual interruption of check-ins and status meetings. This makes it simpler for team leaders to report on KPIs and make business decisions based on real-time data.

It also helps them keep tabs on team and individual engagement to help ensure positive morale and to retain great talent—a key factor in growth.

The next generation of the digital-first work model

“When you boil it down, there are really only two reasons why we make technology investments,” said Scott, “one is to improve customer experience. And the other is to improve employee experience."

"This is the next generation of delivering a better employee experience for the digital-first work world and all the different facets, permutations and combinations of that.”

While there are countless communication and task-management solutions out there to support digital and distributed teams, Produce8 is the first to tie them all together and create a clear view of the entire 

 for teams. It’s the first to automate productivity and workforce management, and it’s the final pillar to create a strong operating system for the digital-first work world.

This article is the first in our three-part series on the founding and founders of Produce8: Mark Scott, 

Early into the pandemic, there were a handful of companies that took very public and forward-thinking stances when it came to remote and hybrid work.

Shopify dubbed itself, ‘digital by default’. Twitter told its employees they could work from home ‘forever’. And Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said, “we’re not going back.”

The concept of the workplace had shifted for many, but not without questions and concerns.

“If we're moving to this digital-first work world, how do we, as a company, transition a thousand people to working from home and do it effectively?” said Mark Scott, CEO of managed service provider Fully Managed. 

“That was the first question.”

Scott has been in the tech game for more than two decades. He founded and scaled N-able (NYSE:NABL)—a leader in IT technology solutions for managed service providers (MSPs)—that sold to Texas-based Solarwinds for $120M. It was subsequently spun-out separately and taken public. He then started his own MSP, TUC, which successfully merged with Fully Managed in 2018. Since the merger, he has helped grow the business’s revenue three-fold to $100M and its team from 150 people to north of 400. And most recently, he led the business through acquisition by Canadian communications giant, TELUS (NYSE:TU; TSX:T).

Needless to say, Scott has had a front-row seat to the surge of remote, hybrid and digital-first work culture.

“There's this business problem that needs to be addressed first, but there’s an individual problem as well,” he said. 

So what does that look like?

Key pillars of the digital worker

The way Scott sees it, there are a few key pillars for the digital-first work world:

IT experience, which includes the technology tools as well as the services, support and security around that.

Employee experience, including on-demand human resource service management and online learning management services and support.

Work analytics, comprised of insights into digital work productivity and application utilization.

As COVID-19 progressed, most companies quickly cobbled together and adopted various solutions and some form of infrastructure to support work-from-wherever environments.

But there was a missing element that Scott couldn’t stop thinking about.

An operating system for the digital-first work world

How can owners, managers and teams gain a clear view of what everyone's actually doing, where they’re doing it and what they’re accomplishing in remote, hybrid and digital-first work environments?

That’s what was on Scott’s mind.

Sure, there are tools for task-tracking, checking in and status updating—but those come at a cost. There’s a great deal of effort involved in keeping these solutions up-to-date, and the over-communication and over-burden quickly become overwhelming at all levels of a company.

As it turned out, Scott’s co-worker Joel Abramson, the chief strategy officer at Fully Managed, had these same questions rolling around in his brain. And the answers could only be found in data no one was even collecting—yet.

Remote and digital-first employees spend their days interacting with, and working within, the various pieces of their companies’ technology infrastructures. So what can their activities tell us about their productivity and the effectiveness of their work patterns, both as individuals and as a collective?

Scott and Abramson brought their concept to Chris Day, Fully Managed founder/board member and CEO of investment firm Top Down Ventures. Day quickly took the idea to another level, incubating the concept into reality, then tapping one of his Top Down “top guns” Ryan McGinnis to build out the strategy and product development team. From there, this missing piece of the remote workforce operating system evolved, grew legs and became a whole lot more than just a concept. It became a company they called Produce8.

While the team was interested in surfacing data around remote, hybrid and digital-first teamwork patterns, the individual use-case potential became clear as well.

“With Produce8, a person can start to look and say, ‘here's what my work activity stream looks like’,” said Scott. “‘I think I was really productive today. So what does that look like in terms of the applications I've used and how much time I spent on them?’ And what were the outcomes?”

This is the personal productivity analytics piece of the platform. Individuals have the ability to look across all the applications they use in a day and really understand their typical workflow.

“From there, you can start to extend it to the team,” he said.

Where's the team spending time as a whole across the entire technology stack? And what’s being accomplished collectively?

“It’s a way of making sure we’re productive individually, we’re productive from an overall team standpoint, and ultimately this will benefit the company as well.”

How can we do remote, hybrid and digital-first work better?

“I think we all know digital-first is not going away,” said Scott, “and I think we all know many people are more productive working from home.”

Having a platform that clearly shows remote individual and team workflow dynamics as well as the measurable outcomes being accomplished simplifies and streamlines the management of this entire environment.

With Produce8, individuals can view their workdays with a more critical eye to ensure they’re making the best use of their valuable time. If you have a clear timeline of everything you do and accomplish in a day then you can spot your inefficiencies and work toward producing the same output in less time.

Produce eight hours of output in...however long it takes, and no more than that.

Teams can use this productivity data source to not only reach goals collectively, but also shift individual strategies based on how other team members are seeing success. All for one, and one for all.

In an office setting, this kind of collaborative learning and idea-sharing might happen more organically. In a remote or hybrid work environment, open and transparent digital teamwork makes this possible while simultaneously avoiding the more negative forms of in-office co-worker distraction.

And from a managerial perspective? This platform provides some much-needed visibility into where teams are spending their time and what they’re accomplishing—without the continual interruption of check-ins and status meetings. This makes it simpler for team leaders to report on KPIs and make business decisions based on real-time data.

It also helps them keep tabs on team and individual engagement to help ensure positive morale and to retain great talent—a key factor in growth.

The next generation of the digital-first work model

“When you boil it down, there are really only two reasons why we make technology investments,” said Scott, “one is to improve customer experience. And the other is to improve employee experience."

While there are countless communication and task-management solutions out there to support digital and distributed teams, Produce8 is the first to tie them all together and create a clear view of the entire digital workplace for teams. It’s the first to automate productivity and workforce management, and it’s the final pillar to create a strong operating system for the digital-first work world.

This article is the first in our three-part series on the founding and founders of Produce8: Mark Scott, Chris Day and Joel Abramson. 

Managing in a Digital-First Work World

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