In this new period of hybrid work with extra chats, extra conferences, and longer days, workers are on the lookout for methods to enhance their focus, temper, and wellness.1 What if I instructed you that movement-driven “microbreaks” of solely two minutes might present that elevate and allow you to be extra productive? That’s the concept behind the Breakthru wellbeing app for Microsoft Teams, constructed on the Teams platform.
According to Breakthru, the app makes use of interactive microbreaks created by motion specialists to assist enhance cognitive focus, productiveness, and wellbeing. Because it’s in Teams, the place workers are already working, utilizing Breakthru can support them in rebooting their metabolism between conferences or refocusing after lengthy intervals of focus. That makes it simple to determine and preserve a break-taking apply.
Meanwhile, the Breakthru app in Teams is accessible to greater than 300 million potential month-to-month lively customers in 500,000 organizations. Finding the suitable viewers is vital for impartial software program distributors (ISVs), and simply three years after launching on Teams, Breakthru reaches greater than 45,000 organizations worldwide, with a rising buyer base.
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Breakthru used 4 priceless ways to extend engaged customers whereas enhancing worker wellbeing and productiveness: pinning to the Teams app bar, encouraging customers to share, harnessing information to tailor options, and making the most of the Microsoft ecosystem. We’ll present how different ISVs can observe Breakthru’s instance to drive app utilization and enhance buyer acquisition.
Pinning to the Teams app bar helps Breakthru provide wellbeing within the circulation of labor
Breakthru pairs research-backed motion breaks with nature-inspired visuals and sounds. The app sends reminders to encourage workers to begin a apply that may enhance office engagement and counteract burnout, in line with Breakthru. Enterprises can promote bodily and psychological wellbeing and assist enhance worker morale.
Unlike different wellbeing instruments, Breakthru in Teams exists throughout the circulation of workers’ work. “Building a truly useful modern work tool requires seamlessly incorporating it into the modern work environment,” says Breakthru Founder Melissa Painter.
Breakthru additionally gives the flexibility to share breaks after which take part with colleagues. That’s necessary for Breakthru’s enterprise mannequin, which we’ll cowl later, and it may be an efficient device for high-stress, fast-paced jobs. For instance, healthcare workers usually battle with self-care.
“Breakthru only requires a fraction of the day, and medical workers can support each other’s wellbeing right from Teams. That provides an incredible return for a healthcare company seeking to better the workplace.”
Melissa Painter, Breakthru Founder
Breakthru’s clients embrace the National Health Service (NHS) within the United Kingdom. Painter and Nic Saunders, a Microsoft Customer Success Manager (CSM), launched the app to the NHS England NHSmail Centre of Excellence, the nationwide safe collaboration service for well being and social care, which focuses on reworking the way in which well being companies work collectively.
“Micro movements to improve mental health shone through, and the app was so simple to use that our team knew we had to get this out,” says Gemma Rogerson, NHS England Lead Delivery Manager. “NHS employees can now give their colleagues the gift of time and positive movement.”
Teams may assist ISVs deploy apps for max affect with customers. One buyer just lately accomplished a mushy launch of Breakthru just by pinning it to the Teams app bar, with none inner announcement. Within eight hours, 20 % of workers used the app, the shopper’s highest price ever.
Sharing microbreaks in Teams helped Breakthru construct a worldwide consumer base
As a startup, it was necessary for Breakthru to develop its subscriber base organically, and the sharing features in Teams accelerated the corporate’s product-led progress technique.
When workers share breaks, it drives natural adoption and better consumer counts inside enterprises—essential for growing Breakthru’s subscriber base. Encouraging employees to share apps through Teams may assist ISVs achieve new customers. Breakthru permits customers to attempt the app and share with coworkers with out a full subscription, serving to workers preserve their wellbeing whereas the app develops a consumer base. Then Breakthru can observe up with the group’s management to showcase how workers are having fun with it.
“Many executives are anxious about buying apps that their employees don’t use,” Painter says. “It’s refreshing to go into a meeting and say, ‘We know your employees will use and share Breakthru because they’re already doing it in Teams right now.’”
Between September 2022 and May 2023, Breakthru elevated the variety of lively month-to-month tenants in Teams by about 25 %.
Data from Azure informs Breakthru options that enhance utilization
Breakthru is constructed on Microsoft Azure, and the workers analyzes information inside Azure Monitor Application Insights to make product choices and discover patterns to gasoline new buyer acquisition. They examine anonymized consumer habits to know product launch variations, and so they take a look at which options and onboarding fashions assist develop devoted customers.
Anytime they see a characteristic influencing habits and making the app stickier, they enrich these facets of the product. Data from Azure confirmed that when individuals first encountered the app, a overwhelming majority used the reminder perform to set a time to attempt it later. Since then, the corporate added gamification capabilities to assist with adoption, and a current redesign drove a utilization spike.
Breakthru has additional elevated utilization by growing relationships with many CSMs, who function additional boots on the bottom. The CSMs additionally go buyer suggestions to Breakthru to proceed bettering the product. In early March, Breakthru added “breathing breaks,” a user-requested characteristic that might assist appeal to new clients.
Microsoft helps simplify the gross sales course of and enhance deal velocity
In early 2023, Breakthru earned Microsoft 365 Certification to indicate potential clients that the app meets stringent requirements for safety and compliance. Navigating a corporation’s technical necessities ought to now solely require a number of weeks quite than months, accelerating the gross sales and deployment course of.
Breakthru can be extending throughout the Microsoft 365 atmosphere by means of Viva Connections and planning so as to add breaks in Outlook.
“As a small, agile team, it’s an incredible advantage to launch a product that lands in so many major enterprises because we’re operating inside this world-class ecosystem.”
Melissa Painter, Breakthru Founder
The relationship with Microsoft helps speed up innovation, too. This previous summer time, Painter and her staff visited The Hive, Microsoft’s office lab, to check Breakthru in Teams Rooms, that are hybrid-centric but full-sized areas outfitted with Teams know-how. By combining these modern areas with Breakthru’s app, the staff was in a position to create Wellbeing Rooms, which can enable workers to make use of their very own gadgets to show unused convention rooms into digital and sonic environments for immersive motion breaks.
The take a look at supplied an thrilling preview of how Breakthru and Teams will proceed evolving collectively to enhance the office expertise.
Learn extra about collaborative apps in Microsoft Teams
Give clients an expertise they’ll love by constructing collaborative apps with Microsoft Teams.
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Discover Breakthru’s app out there for Microsoft Teams and be taught extra about Breakthru’s movement-based breaks for wellbeing at work.
This weblog sequence highlights ISVs which have achieved enterprise progress and added worth for his or her clients by constructing and deploying apps on Microsoft Teams. We love sharing associate success tales. If you have got a narrative, please contact us.
1The New Future of Work: Research from Microsoft on the Impact of the Pandemic on Work Practices, Microsoft. January 2021.