Jul 27, 2020

Product/service software that facilitates video calling Forward-thinking early positioning helped Zoom ride the Covid-19 wave into the vaunted club of companies whose brand names double as the widely used verb for the service they offer. The videoconferencing company’s stock price has nearly quadrupled since the beginning of the year, and it’s now worth well more than all of the country’s major airlines combined. The company owes at least part of its place in the quarantine economy to decisions made early in lockdown to make the platform cheaper and more accessible, gaining it a commanding share of the countless organizations suddenly in need of reliable streaming communication tools. Company Clara Labs Category productivity: AI virtual assistant Product/service an AI-based software application that helps humans complete simple tasks like scheduling and note taking Clara Labs Since its sale to recruiting platform TopFunnel last August, Clara Labs has been tailoring its innovative approach to automated meeting scheduling to the needs of harried hiring professionals and job seekers. The company’s virtual assistant uses machine learning to scan emails and pull out relevant dates and times, allowing users to quickly and easily lock down interviews and other meetings. The company has always prided itself in bringing a human touch to the artificial intelligence training process, an approach that has yielded an assistant that reads and writes conversationally and knows how to go the extra mile in calendar management. Company Atlassian Product/service software that helps teams manage schedules, timelines, projects and workloads Atlassian A sudden abundance of far-flung employees in need of remote coordination helped Atlassian grow its stock price by around half during the Covid-19 quarantine this year. The cloud-based project-management platform, which counts blue-chip companies such as General Electric, Verizon and Walmart among its clients, launched a free version of its core software and services and a remote work hub to better serve the influx of new enterprise customers. The efforts paid off: As of the end of April, the Australian firm had already grown its quarterly revenue by 33% year over year. Sprinklr Product/service a platform for monitoring conversations and trends on social media channels The customer-experience management platform partnered with TikTok in April, incentivizing brands to advertise on the video-creation app as its popularity spiked amid the pandemic. Using Sprinklr, brands can create and manage in-feed video ads on TikTok and monitor productivity with real-time reporting. The platform also allows brands to increase return on ad spend with features such as AI-powered optimization and Sprinklr Smart Rules, which automatically adjusts ad content to remain relevant based on social conversations and unforeseen events. Sprinklr, which turned 10 in 2019, had its last round of funding in 2016 and is valued at $1.8 billion. Continue Reading Click for more from this issue This story first appeared in the July 27, 2020, issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe. Share