As businesses grow, keeping teams connected and work flowing smoothly can become a real challenge. Kumu, the largest social entertainment app in the Philippines that champions Filipino voices from across the world, wanted to make teamwork easier and more efficient. To do this, it has embraced Lark as a key tool to improve communication, streamline tasks, and boost productivity across its team structure.
With over 8 million Millennials and Gen Z users visiting the app 60 million times a month and hosting more than 50,000 daily livestreams across over 50 countries, Kumu has built a thriving digital community. However, with over 300 employees working across different locations, the platform faced the common challenges of a rapidly growing tech scale-up — delayed processes, scattered workflows, and communication gaps. To maintain a smooth social media experience for both their team and users, Kumu turned to Lark, an all-in-one collaboration suite, to optimize their internal operations.
Maximizing Productivity with Lark
Kumu’s engineering team operates across multiple countries, making cross-functional collaboration a must. The platform’s fast-evolving nature requires teams to quickly translate ideas into action, from customer feedback to product development. However, language barriers and scattered communication channels made collaboration tricky.
Lark helped solve this problem through its built-in translation features in chat, video conferencing, and documents that act like a universal translator. Employees could now exchange ideas clearly, articulate complex processes with ease, and ensure alignment across departments. Whether it was explaining technical concepts, refining product strategies, or discussing operational updates, Lark enabled Kumu to maintain a synchronized and efficient workflow.
Before using Lark, Kumu relied on multiple tools such as Slack, Jira, and Asana to manage feature releases, track DevOps tickets, and communicate with stakeholders. This fragmented approach was time-consuming and inefficient, as product managers had to switch between apps to track progress with engineers, maintain a feature repository, and update business owners, often repeating information across platforms.
With Lark’s all-in-one solution, Kumu streamlined key workflows into a single platform. Product managers could oversee feature releases, track progress, and update stakeholders seamlessly. By eliminating repetitive tasks, Lark saved Kumu an average of 2 hours per day, enabling teams to focus on innovation and execution.
“Lark helps us achieve our goals because of its efficient features that organized our company so much better compared to our previous work platform. Lark is a game-changer for Kumu. We tried many collaboration tools over the years: FB Messenger, WhatsApp, Slack, but none of them was able to achieve complete adoption from Kumu employees. Lark is easy to adopt. Its all-in-one capability helps to streamline our current processes,” said Ellard Capiral, VP of Engineering in Technology & Product at Kumu.
A Smarter, More Connected Workplace
With Lark Approvals, Kumu reduced approval processing time from 1 week to just 2 days, making the approval process faster and more efficient. Employees can submit and track IT requests, budget approvals, and operational clearances in one place, no more switching between Google Forms, spreadsheets, and emails. With real-time tracking and automated notifications, approvals that used to take a week now get done in just two days. This streamlined process boosts efficiency across teams, allowing them to focus on execution instead of chasing approvals.
Lark’s all-in-one platform made HR operations more organized by centralizing documents, streamlining approvals, and automating task assignments. HR can easily tag teammates within a document, instantly notifying them in chat and integrating task tracking assignments. This transformation not only speeds up processes but also allows HR to focus on strategic initiatives that drive company growth.
“At Lark, we believe that seamless communication and collaboration are key to driving innovation and productivity. Our built-in translation, workflow automation, and centralized communication tools have empowered Kumu’s teams to work more efficiently across borders. This partnership exemplifies our commitment to helping businesses break down barriers and achieve operational excellence,” said Mark Dembitz, General Manager, APAC at Lark.
With Lark as its collaboration platform, Kumu has built a smarter and more connected workplace. By having everything in one place, Kumu teams can work together seamlessly, save time, and focus on what really matters–delivering joyful social experiences to Filipinos worldwide.