Getting to know Priv Tech

Kakuda: We are a company called Priv Tech. We started as a group of people with a background in privacy and digital technology called “Data With Trust”. We established our company to implement data privacy and fair use. This need is especially prominent in the digital sector.

If you use the Internet, you use cookies but, often, end-users are unaware that their data is being collected and used. This activity is often unregulated. To that end, more countries start pushing out legislation.More users start wondering “How is my data used?”. For users, the ultimate satisfaction is to know that their data is processed by someone they can trust. We want to build such a world so that’s why we are running Priv Tech.

Right now we are mainly committed to working with B2B clients. We offer them two things: a CMP (consent management platform) and consulting services that help clients adapt their operations to changes in data protection regulations.

We hope that the end-user can have no concerns about data gathering and storage – that’s the key direction the team is taking.

Challenges before joining oVice

In April 2020, the discussion around the emergency state started growing stronger. Soon after the outbreak, around April-May, we decided to work remotely wherever possible. Since the entire team is tech-savvy, so it wasn’t difficult to use video conferencing tools.

However, on these platforms, you have to manually set up every meeting: it was a hassle and a psychological hurdle. We had to consider the timing for each meeting and put it into the calendar.

As for text-based communication, most members are good at it but, where a call takes 5 minutes, a text-based conversation can take an hour. So we started wondering if there’s an easier way to handle verbal communication. We weren’t that challenged but we wanted to improve our performance.

So we look at various tools and found oVice.

Why did you decide to use oVice?

To start with, oVice has a high voice call quality. Also, it makes voice-based communication easier. Being able to move between areas to have conversations is convenient: if someone needs you, they will approach you, when the conversation is over, they will walk away. If a few teammates are having a relevant conversation, you can join. Everything feels really natural. Another advantage was reasonable pricing.

So, organization-wide, we decided that oVice was a fit for us.

Benefits of oVice

Giving people freedom is part of our original culture, we are not setting any strict rules. However, we did decide to enter oVice as the entire organization because it made communication more efficient.

Personally, I am interested in tools like this so I was really vocal about wanting to use oVice.

It was more challenging to involve people who thought we were doing okay without such a platform.I encouraged the team to spend as much time there as possible and, over a while, even those who didn’t feel the benefits of oVice at first would find the platform comfortable. In fact, we agreed to use oVice faster than I had imagined.

If I asked them how they liked it, they told me it was a good platform so we decided to use it officially.

Good things about oVice

Kakuda: The things I liked about oVice are, as I mentioned before, high audio quality. In comparison, other tools use a lot more data. If the interaction is voice-based, the interaction is more lightweight and you can hear everyone clearly.

Another benefit is the ease of screen-sharing. In other tools, you have to share one screen at a time. In oVice, each call participant can share their screen. This was unexpectedly useful. For example, if I am referring to two documents, I can divide the presentation between teammates – it’s a small but convenient detail.

Also, I like the fact that the background is a lightweight image and you can place objects on top of it, like the company’s mission. It’s a thing we do at the real office and here it’s easy to implement as well.Other than that, it’s nice to be able to invite outsiders to the office. There are many more internal use cases but I am happy to use oVice to talk to people outside the company.

Eguchi: My name is Eguchi from PrivTech. I joined in July and, at the same time, started using oVice. For me, there are two key benefits. For one, since I just joined, I want to ask casual questions but it was hard to do when working remotely. If it were in person, you would just ask a senior colleague sitting next to you. It was harder to do remotely but oVice made it possible.

The second point is that I don’t feel much loneliness. I think it’s common to feel lonely when working remotely but, as I use oVice, there are only a few times when I feel this way. For example, someone can talk to me and I can chat back with them easily. This way, I don’t feel isolated when working remotely.

Vision for the future

Eguchi: I would love to use oVice as a way to interact with young people. As we work remotely, there are fewer opportunities to chat with the person sitting next to us. I think that creating a space for bonding with colleagues would liven up the company. Of course, there’s the motivation part – we are going to be more excited to work if we have fun doing it.
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Kakuda: As for our oVice utilization policy, since we are a startup, I am looking forward to expanding the team. We already have teammates from all over the country but, using oVice, we can start hiring abroad. This is the culture I want to expand in the future.
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I want to increase the number of people using oVice as a hub for verbal communication.
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These were mainly internal uses but, outside of that, I would be happy to invite people from other departments and host seminars in oVice. Then, people would be able to talk to event staff and ask their questions after the presentation is over. Not having such interactions is probably a challenge event planners are facing during the pandemic.
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By using oVice, we would be able to comfortably answer our clients’ questions after a seminar. I have many ideas about ways to use oVice and I hope to implement them eventually.
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Innovative companies like Priv Tech use oVice to stay up to speed with innovation and harness the power of technology for productive and fulfilling work. They are among 2,200 companies that rely on virtual offices for day-to-day communication.
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Explore different ways for businesses to use oVice and the unique benefits of working at a virtual office by diving deeper into our use cases. To chat with the team, visit the oVice tour space.