At the Leaders Forum in San Francisco, CEO and Co-Founder Howie Liu positioned Airtable’s Connected Apps Platform^TM as a way for companies to connect workflows, share data, and deepen trust between teams. “Siloed data, misalignment between departments, and disconnected processes restrain organizations from moving quickly and in lock step,” Howie said in his keynote. Throughout the event customers shared their success stories of how connected apps are transforming companies in every industry—from streamlining the publication of tens of thousands of images to Pottery Barns website, to creating an internal product feedback app at BlackRock, and maximizing storytelling opportunities for video game developers at Riot Games. 

At BlackRock, Dan Cunningham, the Senior Director of Product Management for Aladdin Wealth^TM, built a connected app in Airtable that powers Aladdin Wealth’s collaboration. The app attaches individual tasks to sales goals and provides talk tracks for client-facing team members to describe product features. This doesn’t include any client data or personal identifiable information, only internal project information. With Airtable’s real-time updates, the team at Aladdin Wealth^TM avoids a lot of ad-hoc meetings and chasing people down to report product updates to senior stakeholders. Dan says, “Airtable frees up 80 hours a week of our product marketing team’s time.”

Angela Williams is Pottery Barn's Director of Creative Services. Her team manages 40,000 pages of products on Pottery Barn's website each season. Every page, asset, and copy that customers view before adding something to their shopping cart online is managed in Airtable. “At the end of the day, we're trying to please our customers and we need to have time to look at the product from their point of view. Airtable helps us do that,” Angela said. 

Kate Rella, Director of Business Operations for IP Strategy at Riot Games, needed a way to track creative development for every video game character’s story. Her team keeps products across the company connected as the plot advances forward  for each character so fans have the ultimate experience. Her team built a connected app in Airtable to sync data and connect business operations to the creative, campaigns and product teams. Through shared data they can understand what the product goals are, what stories to tell and where the best collaboration opportunities lie. Kate says, “if we're all connected, the fans get surprise and delight at every turn. Airtable has worked well for us. It makes what feels like an impossible task—managing all these disconnected pieces of information—possible.” 

Like so many large organizations, these companies were battling org-wide silos that stemmed from trapped data and disparate workflows. To read more transformation stories from customers who attended ALF head to our blog. Customers like Benchling and SHI are using connected apps to bring their data to life, align cross-functional teams, save time, and yield important business results.