Clockwise, from the company of the same name in San Francisco, is calendar optimization software, which uses AI to create uninterrupted blocks of time, enhance Slack, take the stress out of complex scheduling, resolve double bookings, and balance appointments while allowing users to meet their Focus Time goals.
June 16, 2020 Bain Capital Ventures announced leading an $18M Series B funding round in Clockwise.
$0
per month per user
Microsoft 365
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) is a Microsoft Cloud subscription service that includes Microsoft Office products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access). The software can be installed across multiple devices and ensures that users always have the most up-to-date version of the included Office applications.
This is great for Operations people who need to parse through many calendars at once when scheduling meetings, even if the rest of the organization isn't using it. Clockwise does not allow you to put meetings on other people's calendars, though, or find times for meetings that you aren't in, so keep that in mind. It has still been a life-saver for me. Clockwise isn't great for scheduling client meetings due to the fact that it automatically places emojis in the names of the meetings, and there are other little branding things that are impossible to remove even on paid plans. I tended to just find time for the meetings in Clockwise and then move back to Google Calendar to schedule them
Microsoft 365 would be well suited for medium to large enterprises. This is where there are several hundreds or thousands of people. Since most everyone has used one of the applications the learning curve would be reduced. Another reason would be the ability to implement security measures to prevent access to sensitive data. This could justify the cost of an Enterprise license.
So far the Microsoft 365 platform provides features and tools that can cater to 100% of present organizations needs considering both technical and business necessities, however most features are not been effectively utilised at present. The current featureset is able to cover for most of the future needs of the business and technical functions.
It doesn't have a dark mode, which is not fun. There is no Month or Year view which isn't great, only day or week. It's hard to get used to and the flexible meetings aren't as intuitive as they claim to be/should be. This is great for scheduling, but in terms of functioning as a calendar, it's not my go-to choice. The JOIN button for the upcoming virtual meeting is nice, though. Clockwise would have gotten a nine if I could schedule meetings on other people's calendars or remove my availability from the equation when scheduling meetings that I won't be in
Microsoft 365 is the gold standard for performing project tasks in a professional environment, enabling the quick transfer and exchange of files and ideas for team members who work locally and remotely. Its suite of tools is familiar and has evolved to being cloud based, allowing for files to be updated in real time from near and far.
To-date Microsoft 365 platform has offered an amazing uptime and availability percentage per year compared to all other products which provide the stability and overall business resilience of their ecosystem which is a great relief for information technology service entitites which heavy rely on Microsoft offerings as a whole to redeliver their own custom products
The Microsoft 365 tools expects and demands a substantial amount of system resources to operate at optimal level and even more when integrated with other applications which is a downside, however given that external supporting tech factors such as fibre/broadband speed bandwidth, high speed RAM and ample storage resources are allocated the tools work error free providing robust communication
Over the past 8 years of using Microsoft 365, I have noticed that they change vendors often. This always leads to a poor experience in the beginning, then levels out after some time for the company to get things worked out. As a customer, it is really frustrating because I don't have time when something isn't working to have them "look into my issue" and get back with me. They have even closed a ticket I specifically told them to keep open. Your applications are only as good as the support.
The resellers involved with selling Microsoft products are reluctant to provide in person specialist trainings to consumers due to the fact of costs of economies of scale and is not provided free of charge most of the time. In Person trainings needs to be agreed to at the initiation of projects and implementations for better ROI.
The standard training offered with 3rd part resellers are fairly standard and covers the basic workability however the trainings needs to be specifically customised according to unique requirements of the organizations. for example an MSP would need to master specific communications verticals within Microsoft 365 whereas and online store using Microsoft 365 would needs to master a different set of tools within the suite to get the best ROI post implementation.
The Microsoft support partners are more than capable of handling implementations and dealing with unprecedented errors during the implementations. Not part of the implementation though the setup was done with minimum misconfigurations which is evident with present live setup which works fine without any bugs and gaps at present context.
Clockwise has additional features/bells and whistles that the others do not. For example, the travel time feature if you are booking meetings that you need to drive to and from. Also booking across teams, rather than having to enter each individual manually
Typically I prefer working with companies with Microsoft 365 as their main tool because they're usually a fast growing company with a global presence. I like using it for work because it's easy to collaborate, share, review, comment, reply in any of the tools. The mobile app for Outlook and Teams are lifesavers when we're constantly traveling and you can join meetings on the mobile Teams to never miss a beat.
Microsoft pricing is not very expensive and yet not very cheap as well, and it hovers in between the baseline. The charges are mostly based on the tier level partners who charge based on their individual reputation in the market. Power negotiation will lead to cost effective and attractive pricing
Multiple tools within the same platform have been deployed successfully within different functional technical and non technical teams such as Devops, SOC, NOC, Shared services, Managed services, Global Information technology, Cloud operations, Finance, Administration, human resources and all these teams collaborate while maintaining central uniformity in terms of global standards who are dispersed in different geographical locations with ease
Have not directly obtained professional services from Microsoft but rather obtained specialized services such as implementations and configurations, setting up and integration support with Microsoft authorized suppliers, 3rd parties, and resellers, which has been a pleasant experience. Again the level of delivery quality on professional services is based on the level of hands on exposure of the 3rd party
We have a lot of nonprofit users, so they have a good ROI.
I like the constant updates without having to purchase the software repeatedly.
I used to purchase each Office (insert year here) often, so the software was up to date and had the newest options and connectors. I think my return on investment would have been much better if Microsoft had updated those versions to keep them current; after all, we did pay for them.
Microsoft 365's offering a monthly fee or a discount for a year helps, and you can look at it as a free backup if you have everything set to back up to One Drive. (Cloud-based document filing you can access anywhere ( with an internet connection)—you Can't beat that!)
