Documenting processes spurred Demodesk's growth
Demodesk is an online customer meeting platform that automates non-selling tasks, leaving reps free to focus on what matters: selling. Its team rolled out Notion across the organization to kick the company into hypergrowth.
Insights from
Filippo Laita
People Operations Manager
Victoria Hauzeneder
Chief Of Staff
1
Doubling headcount?
No worries
Once upon a time, Demodesk was an office-based company. As an in-person company, onboarding took a bit less effort, with things like shoulder-taps and coffee walks making the process of sharing information easy. But the pandemic forced them to move to remote work — so Demodesk had to get more intentional about the process.
Now, they use a custom onboarding checklist on Notion. It introduces employees to the entire company, also providing job-specific tools and duties. Employees manage their own onboarding, making remote onboarding more of a guided path than a one-dimensional Zoom call.
All the benefits of in-person onboarding… but online.
Notion is a great entry point into the company. We can set people up and then let them explore on their own.
Victoria Hauzeneder
Chief Of Staff
Chief Of Staff
2
Maintaining consistent processes across all teams
With such rapid company growth, it began getting difficult for Demodesk to keep everyone's work aligned. Engineering, marketing, sales — it was like spinning dozens of plates.
“Our CEO was thinking about how to scale the company,” says Victoria. “She knew we had to document our workflows.”
They began standardizing processes on Notion — everything from expense reimbursements to knowledge sharing. They store processes in one central database and teams have views of this database in their wikis to see only their specific processes.
Instead of effort re-inventing the wheel or doing a process incorrectly, this database helps maintain consistency and transparency org-wide.
Teams see the most important processes with filtered database views.
3
Connecting day-to-day work to the overarching mission
When Demodesk was smaller, it was easy for employees to understand everything that was going on. They could see what their colleagues were working on and the impact of each project. But as the company grew, the through line from work to the company goals became more opaque.
They migrated OKRs to Notion and made them public across the company. This Notion database fosters transparency across the entire company, keeping the entire team engaged. Everyone can see in-flight initiatives, what their objectives are, and how that work ladders up to Demodesk's mission
Find out what any team or individual is working on with transparent OKRs.
We looked into dedicated OKR software, but in the end said, 'Hey, Notion can do everything we need.'
Victoria Hauzeneder
Chief Of Staff
Chief Of Staff
4
Aligning teams on a centralized workspace
Building a startup is like building a plane while flying it. While Demodesk stayed in the air, it found its team was using many tools to keep the plane in flight — multiple project management tools, duplicate documentation platforms, and so on. With more than 50 tools, it was confusing *and* expensive, not to mention all the tool fatigue it caused the team.
While Notion started as a documentation tool, the team quickly saw its other use cases — and began replace other tools.
They cut a bunch of services entirely, including Asana, Trello, and more. They even use a Notion database to keep track of those software subscriptions that remain. Each entry includes account ownership, internal training docs, and related processes.
With a centralized workspace, nothing's lost of siloed. Finding information means checking one tool, not a dozen.
Project management, product roadmaps, documentation, and wikis — Notion does it all.
