Using Universal Search and AI to Improve Productivity: Trium Group Case Study

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‍The Trium Group is a West Coast-based management consulting and executive coaching firm that helps organizations solve their most complex strategic, operational, cultural, and leadership challenges. Since it was founded in 1998, Trium has served hundreds of leading global companies including Airtable, Calendly, LinkedIn, and Lululemon, among many others.

The details:

Number of employees: 35
Industry: Executive Coaching and Management Consulting
Tech-stack: Outlook, Slack, Dropbox, Hubspot, Google Drive, Asana

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The challenge

Working with top global organizations in a high-touch business requires a tailored approach for each unique client. While Trium brings years of knowledge and expertise to the table, key insights and go-to information are spread across countless communications and platforms.

Most of the company’s information lives within files saved in Dropbox which “is not the most searchable,” says Francesca Gomes, Operations Manager, Strategic Projects at Trium. “Sometimes we need something that’s in an obscure email thread or is a one-off comment someone made a while back,” she says.

“Our team regularly pulls together fact packs about organizations to help prepare us for business development conversations,” says Gomes. “We need details about things like leadership, funding, and news within the last month. It’s a lot to pull together.”

The team found itself needing to reinvent the wheel for each new proposal, and having to disrupt colleagues with basic questions.  Gomes and her teammate, Sophy Chen, were tasked with finding a tech solution that would unlock speed and efficiency based on the company’s existing knowledge base. 

“You don’t know what the problem is until you use it”

Chen and Gomes launched the project wanting to find an intranet for the company. But they quickly realized that a full-fledged intranet would require a lot of upkeep and manual migration.  

“We’d previously tried another knowledge management solution but it never really took off,” says Chen, who is the Office Manager at Trium.

“You don’t know what the problem is until you try out a new tool yourself. It was really hard to keep the information current. It was a lot of work, and so everyone just kept using their existing systems. It was still just easier to Slack someone.”  

Fast, easy implementation

When they stumbled upon Dashworks during their online research, they realized that the AI-powered assistant might actually be the answer to their problems. 

“I like the fact that it stays current and can search through everything we have,” says Gomes. “There’s not as much work to make sure we can access the latest information.”

With Dash AI, Trium could simply connect and conduct real-time searches with no up-front setup or active maintenance.

Trium also values Dashworks’ customer-friendly pricing and the personal attention given to all its customers, regardless of business size.

“Many SaaS tools focus on enterprise,” says Chen. “Smaller companies don’t get a dedicated account person. With Dashworks, we have someone we can reach out to for small and big questions. We feel really supported.”

“No limit to what we can do”

Given its easy setup and the ability to search through its full tech stack, the time and energy savings Trium Group realized from implementing Dash AI were near instant. 

“It’s really helpful—just having everything in one place vs. having to look through multiple different apps and locations,” Gomes says. “One big win has been in helping us find details for project renewals and proposals. We can ask questions like, ‘What did we charge for this offsite?’ or find numbers we can use as a starting point for a new project. Dash AI has become my starting point for anything I need to find.”

And because Dashworks integrates with Trium’s SSO provider and offers usage-based pricing on its Team plan, it’s been simple and cost-effective to roll it out to all Trium employees and let them discover their own ways of using Dash AI.

“We wrote an AI prompt library to help people come up with use cases,” says Chen. “It consists of ideas and prompts that people can use as a starting point and learn what’s useful in their own roles.

“For me, it’s been really cool so far to play around with,” she adds. “I’m still coming up with new uses to this day. It’s like there’s no limit to what you can do.”

Pro tip

“Definitely take some time to play with the solution so that you can find ideas for how to use Dash AI that are specific to your role,” says Chen. “The more you use it, the more useful it becomes. It helps me think about my problems a little differently. One story I tell everyone is that I had a complicated issue that I was working out with a customer service rep and I was able to get a refund with the help of Dash AI. It was able to summarize my problem, understand the nuance, express my concerns, and project the tone I wanted in making my request. That experience helped me learn better communication tactics and gain confidence in my day-to-day writing as well."