Member Article

Behind the Business with Workshare

In the latest instalment of our Behind the Business series, we talk to Anthony Foy, CEO of Workshare, a leading collaboration and social business platform.

Synopsis of area of expertise

Workshare is a leading provider of secure enterprise collaboration applications. The Workshare platform allows individuals to easily create, share, and manage high-value content anywhere, on any device.

What key challenges has your company recently faced?

It’s been a very busy six months for Workshare. Following a £20million investment from Scottish Equity Partners and Business Growth Fund, SkyDox joined forces with Workshare, quickly followed by Workshare’s acquisition of IdeaPlane, an enterprise social network. Since then, we’ve worked quickly to combine three businesses, three different cultures, and three different sets of values to create a single cohesive, high-performance team. Workshare is a dynamic, fast-moving company meeting market demand and customer requirements, delivering innovative collaboration solutions to 1.8 million users across the globe. We are very proud of that!

What is your biggest achievement over the past 12 months?

It’s difficult to pick just one as we’ve released a series of application upgrades recently, including desktop sync, the launch of Workshare Mobile – the first document comparison app – and a number of integrations. All our planned integrations and feature updates aim to make collaboration more efficient and secure and with the app now available both on iOS and Android, our users can access their documents remotely from any device, collaborate securely while on the move and work more efficiently when they’re out of the office.

What is your biggest focus for the coming year?

Following a very busy 12 months we’re focused on further growth in the year ahead. There are a number of further updates and integrations planned as we continually plug customer feedback and changes in the market into our product development plans.

If you had to choose one top piece of advice for someone just starting out in the business, or is currently operating within your industry sector, what would it be?

Firstly, hire good people who are passionate about what they are doing. The second piece of advice I’d give is that irrespective of company size, a business needs to challenge what it is doing on a daily basis. Create a product or service that meets market needs rather than creating a market for your existing offering.

Can you share with us your view of the current landscape of business, in your region or generally, and where your organization sits within it?

The market for file sharing and collaboration solutions is maturing with recent research by ESG indicating that just 28% of organizations currently use an online file sharing or collaboration solution. There’s a huge opportunity to grow market share by persuading the remaining 72% of the benefits of secure, online collaboration solutions. At the same time, many businesses are addressing the “bring your own device trend” and addressing workers’ needs to work remotely and effectively from any device. Our solution addresses these needs and brings the added benefits of security and efficiency to the mix.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Graham Vincent .