Color relies on Clockwise to make collaboration more efficient

Color is a health technology company making healthcare more equitable and accessible. From cancer screening to infectious disease testing and vaccinations, to genomics and everything in-between, Color delivers services and infrastructure that makes it possible for everyone, everywhere to receive the care they need. 

We spoke with Jeroen Van den Akker, Color’s Head of Bioinformatics, to learn how Clockwise helps Color employees manage their time in a sustainable way. Jeroen’s team is responsible for building pipelines that help analyze data from COVID-19 tests, as well as DNA tests that identify people with a high risk for hereditary conditions, such as different types of cancer.

How Clockwise addressed scheduling challenges brought on by COVID-19

Color was instrumental during the COVID-19 response, providing innovative testing and vaccine management technology to communities in need. As a result of the pandemic and the urgent need for modern healthcare infrastructure, the company grew quite rapidly. 

Although Color was eager to scale and play a critical role in the midst of crisis, Jeroen recalls the increased challenge of managing calendars. “Having people on both the east coast and west coast definitely made it more challenging to manage calendars and sync meetings. We especially embraced Clockwise as we grew the team into different time zones.”

As a time orchestration platform, Clockwise makes it possible for dispersed teams to coordinate their calendars more efficiently. Powered by AI, Clockwise learns scheduling preferences across entire teams, intelligently prioritizes meetings to occur at the best time for everyone, and dynamically reacts to changes as they occur throughout the week. 

“It’s really intuitive,” shares Jeroen. “If everybody on your team defines their preferences, like their preferred working times and their time zones, then it becomes really efficient to more easily manage your meetings.”

Better schedules for less effort

For many, scheduling is a job in and of itself. From coordinating times with people across different time zones, to resolving scheduling conflicts and more, calendars often require more work than they’re worth. With Clockwise, however, your ideal schedule is automatic. 

“It’s a tool to improve the efficiency of collaboration,” shares Jeroen. “Because it allows you to much more easily manage your calendar and have both one-on-ones and team meetings without all the interruptions of having to manage your calendar throughout the day.”

When asked about his favorite feature, Jeroen answered, “My favorite feature is definitely flexible meetings.” Flexible Meetings is one of Clockwise’s core features, and a favorite among customers and internal employees. When you mark a meeting as flexible, you give Clockwise permission to move it when a conflict arises or to maximize Focus Time, so your meeting will occur at the most ideal time for you and your attendees. How your meetings move is entirely up to you. “I still keep [my flexible meetings] within the same day,” said Jeroen. “But I don’t worry too much about conflicts that arise because they ‘automagically’ disappear at 4 pm the previous day.”

Jeroen’s team also loves Clockwise because it helps them preserve a team-wide no-meeting day. Every Thursday, the team prioritizes deep work over meetings. “When people try to schedule meetings on that day, they’ll actually get a notification that asks them to reschedule if possible. It helps people be more aware of when we need to focus.”

Bringing intentionality to every day

Clockwise helps Color employees gain more awareness around where they spend their time throughout the week — and not just through automatic rescheduling. Jeroen also shared his appreciation for the “Your week in review” emails. “Every Friday, I get this email with the progression of my calendar and it gives a quick snapshot of how much time I’ve spent in meetings, how that has changed throughout the rescheduling, and also how much Focus Time I had. It is a little bit of a reality check for me to be mindful.”