With these tools, HeyNanny promotes the compatibility of family and career

1. Slack for fast communication
2. Pimped Asana into a Jira clone
3. Looker Studio suffices for now
4. These tools are used by heynanny

At least since the Corona pandemic, many parents know this: daycare closed and the working day full of to-dos and appointments. Searching for replacement care quickly becomes an additional burden. This is the pressure that the start-up heynanny is trying to relieve workers from - and at the same time offering employers more planning security. The mission of founders Anna Schneider and Julia Kahle: to make care work easier for employees (e.g. childcare and elder care) and support companies in living real family-friendly values. For this purpose, employees at heynanny can find caregivers for their children as well as people for elder companionship within the framework of corporate benefits.

What is in the foreground contributes to the compatibility of work and family requires some organization in the background. Therefore, in the case of heynanny, caregivers and families can best be brought together with the help of tools. The start-up reveals which these are in this article.

In our series Tech Stack companies from the digital industry reveal which tools they use and why they specifically chose these software solutions.

Slack for fast communication

The former HR professionals Anna and Julia founded their start-up in 2021. Anna presented her idea in the Female Leadership Network PANDA and immediately convinced Julia, who had just quit her job at the time. Today, the two of them, together with a 20-person team, ensure flexibility and relief in terms of care work. In order for this to work well in everyday start-up life, Slack is the centerpiece of communication among employees. “We use Slack daily and thus probably most frequently for our fast, internal communication,” says Julia. “Since most of us work remotely, not only within Germany but often from abroad, smooth communication is very important to us.“ The popular communication tool, according to Julia, provides the perfect opportunity to stay in touch and update each other. “Of course, we also occasionally share pictures from private life and give each other a virtual smile as often as possible. This is how remote teamwork is fun.

What was convincing was also the user-friendliness of the tool: “The user interface is neat and inviting for teamwork. There are many great tricks that can be used intuitively and are constantly being expanded“, says the founder.

Pimped Asana into a Jira clone

Also anything but unknown and popular in many companies is Asana. heynanny also uses the tool on a daily basis. Initially, the team used Asana in a classic way for project management and efficient teamwork. This is essential in remote work. However, Asana has now grown into much more in the start-up: “We quickly used the tool additionally for our processes in agile software development“, says Julia. “Of course, Jira is the non plus ultra here. But in a small team of developers, UX designers, and a product owner, we get along super well with Asana and have pimped the general possibilities with a few tweaks and individual fields into a pared-down Jira clone.“

In this way, the team can define tickets together, prioritize, prioritize with priorities, and delegate. “With a Kanban Board View, we always keep an eye on the tickets, and the Github Connect allows the development team to handle things well”, reveals the founder. “In addition to our concrete tickets in development, we use other, partially linked boards and projects, but also for our agile roadmap, the collection of requirements and/or tickets from other areas (e.g. support). And of course for the control of marketing and newsletter activities.

According to Julia, Asana at heynanny has probably added the most value. “It is a powerful tool because it can be used so variably“, finds the trained pedagogue. “The user interface is clear and intuitively designed. It allows you to quickly familiarize yourself with the most important features and get started immediately.” This allows projects in the team to be implemented quickly and smoothly.

With heynanny, companies can support their employees with care work in the context of corporate benefits. Photo: heynanny

Goodbye Excel, Hello absence.io!

Microsoft Excel is for good reason one of the most important tools in many companies. The program can implement the most diverse tasks - from classic financial planning to a content plan for social media. Nevertheless, whether Excel is always the most sensible choice for some tasks is another matter. The team at heynanny also knows this and has therefore switched to absence.io for HR processes. “The tool is our latest addition“, reveals Julia. “Since we were previously still working with cumbersome Excel spreadsheets, topics like time recording, vacation planning, and personnel files are no longer a problem, which of course saves us a lot of time. This makes the work much easier for everyone involved, both the recording and processing of the data.“

And for their own software, the Bavarian start-up already got it covered and, in addition, is currently developing an app using the tool React Native. “For our internal processes for user verification and management, we have developed an admin board in-house that reduces a lot of manual work for our developers and allows our Customer Happiness Team to solve a large portion of customer concerns independently.“ According to Julia, however, it should stay with internal use for now.

Looker Studio suffices for now

heynanny carries out its website analytics with Google Analytics. To visualize this data and the actions within the web app in a comprehensible way, the team relies on Looker Studio: “This allows for different sources to be connected, and we also have the opportunity to bring or even link results from different areas into one report”, says Julia. “We currently have enough Looker Studio here, but we would like to switch to a more comprehensive and special reporting suite in the medium to long term.

At heynanny, popular, universal tools with intuitive user guidance go hand in hand with specially developed or modified solutions. The team creates optimal user experiences on the website and in the web app, for example, with Figma, where it tests and improves user interfaces with the help of click dummies. “Reusable design components can be assembled like a construction kit, aiding us in driving our decision-making process quickly”, says Julia. These processes are essential for the cross-functional cooperation of colleagues. The development team can also directly access the designs and components and integrate them into the code base.

The founders Julia Kahle (l.) and Anna Schneider ensure with their start-up heynanny more compatibility of family and work. Photo: heynanny/Tribunalova

With its tool selection, heynanny was able to build a versatile tech stack that helps support families in planning their care work. The community stays up-to-date with HubSpot Marketing Hub for social media marketing and Mailchimp for newsletters: “With little time effort, both the target groups and the email content can be managed very conveniently”, finds Julia. And this also helps inform widely about the offerings of heynanny and accompany companies in their way to more family-friendliness and valuable corporate benefits.

These tools are used by heynanny

These are the most important tools that are used at heynanny: