Huddle

Overview
Huddle is a cloud based collaboration product that helps people work together on projects. It lets employees of an organization focus on mission and business-critical tasks rather than deal with communication bottlenecks or IT infrastructure issues. The product is a web- and downloadable software-based technology that facilitates real-time communication (e.g., chat), document collaboration and sharing, and other teamwork activities like scheduling.

History
Huddle was established in 2006, with offices in London and San Francisco. Headed by Marten Brogger, a technology industry veteran with over two decades of experience, Huddle is backed by multiple investors such as Eden Ventures, Matrix Partners and Icon Ventures to name a few. The company has raised over $83 million in investment as of 2014.

Customers
Huddle is used by more than 100,000 organizations worldwide, including SEGA, AKQA, Unilever, and KIA Motors, to securely manage projects, share files and collaborate with people inside and outside of their business.

Engagement  — Value Creation Proposition
Workplaces today are changing dramatically. Employee friendly policies let people work from home. Globalization means that teams are distributed across the world in different time zones and speaking different languages. Companies are adopting changes in their organization structure and operations bringing in practices such as lean that call for seamless flow of information across the organization. The IT infrastructure & capability that organizations require to realize this are demanding and pose a significant deviation from the focus of many organizations. Huddle takes this challenge away from organizations by providing a secure, reliable & cost-effective cloud based collaboration platform that companies can easily access at reasonable costs.

Tools such as virtual workspace for groups, team based content sharing, cross team collaboration tools such as messaging, task management & tracking tools and intra-company social platforms help organizations create integrated & productive virtual teams. Teams focus on the tasks that are critical to their goals rather than dealing with impediments in flow of information & communication.

Delivery — Value Chain
Huddle develops its software in-house and customers access it initially through Huddle’s website, but customers can also download a software program so that the Huddle interface becomes embedded as part of the user’s laptop or PC operating system. This adds functions to existing software packages like Microsoft Office – for example, users that download Huddle’s software will have an option in a Microsoft Word document to share the document with their Huddle group. Huddle’s platform is accessible from a range of devices from desktop & laptops to the rich set of mobile devices. It also supports a multi-lingual user interface to enable global deployments.

Monetisation — Value Capture
The business model is a simple product model. Customers pay a subscription fee depending upon the class of service they require. Standard service is $20 per month per user, enterprise subscriptions are $40 per month per user and an ‘unlimited’ service is available for a much higher fee.