The novelty of hybrid work has long passed and 2022 marks a milestone in how much we’ve changed the way we work. However, one thing that hasn’t changed is our push towards increasing productivity and reducing time wastage when it comes to our day-to-day activities.

The pandemic brought about many changes, but probably one of the most impactful changes in the workplace has been our adoption of digital solutions. From virtual meetings to task-management software, it has become the norm to have half a dozen tools running on your laptop at any given time.

There is a problem though and it is the abundance of choice. How do we pick the tools that we need? To give us insight into how he uses tech tools to manage his workday, we have Darius Liu, ADDX Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer share what he uses during his day to day work.

Head of APAC for Zoom, Ricky Kapur shares the tech tools that make his life easier

Darius has over 15 years’ experience in the public and private sectors. Prior to joining ADDX, Darius held various roles at GIC, and was most recently Vice President of Total Portfolio Strategy (TPS) in the Economics and Investment Strategy department.

As Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of ADDX, Darius was instrumental in building ADDX from its early stages to the regulated financial institution it is today. Currently, Darius oversees day-to-day operations of the company, including commercial growth via investor and issuer recruitment and onboarding. Darius also serves as Board Director and member of the Board Audit and Risk Committee of the company.

ADDX (formerly iSTOX), is a fully-regulated platform (Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) Fintech Regulatory Sandbox) for the issuance, custody and secondary trading of digital securities. Backed by the Singapore Exchange (SGX), Temasek Holdings subsidiary Heliconia Capital, the venture capital arm of Japan Investment Corporation (JIC) and the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ), the financial technology company has built the world’s leading digital securities exchange.

OneDrive for a shared virtual workspace (Paid and free options)

As hybrid work arrangements take off, we’ve found OneDrive to be extremely handy in allowing us to upload, edit and share documents even when we’re not at our desks. The cloud storage it offers has been useful for me in terms of accessing documents across different devices. For me, that could be during breaks between meetings outside the office, or even when I pop out in the morning to get a cup of coffee.

Managing our content flow with SharePoint (Paid)

In ADDX, we use this as a content management tool where colleagues can share common resources and applications. I find it especially helpful in enabling collaboration – for example, staff are able to work on the same Word document or PowerPoint presentation concurrently. It’s made it a lot easier, and faster, for me to review and approve files as well as suggest changes even before the document is finalised.

We’ve also managed to establish company-wide processes for information sharing and document publishing. Overall, it encourages teamwork while resulting in increased productivity and efficiency.

WeChat to connect with the team in China (Free)

I use WeChat a lot for communication – texts and calls – with colleagues and work associates in China. WeChat is one of the main ways that people in China communicate, even more so than through emails. It’s difficult to travel to China (or anywhere, for that matter) during this pandemic and the app has been crucial in allowing me to stay connected to locals there, especially since the usual messaging apps like WhatsApp are blocked.

Virtual meetings on Zoom (Paid and free options)

All companies have probably familiarised themselves with virtual meetings by now. I have Zoom meetings almost every day, even when I’m physically in the office, as ADDX currently has a hybrid working arrangement and we have a number of colleagues working from home each day.

Beyond internal meetings, ADDX uses Zoom to host webinars for the general public, as well as to conduct investor roadshows – given the pandemic situation in Singapore and the rise of the Omicron variant, we are avoiding physical events. We also have a significant number of global investors – the users of our platform come from cities in more than 25 different countries. Through the Zoom platform, investors can interact with issuers over Zoom and raise any questions they may have about the investment. This has been working well for us, and we frequently have investors joining our roadshows from cities such as London and Hong Kong.

Confluence to improve information access (Paid)

If it hasn’t already been made clear, ADDX is really big on cloud storage. Confluence has been useful as a company-wide knowledge repository tool. We use it to host company-wide information accessible to all staff, such as HR documents, administrative announcements and staff memos. We’ve also compiled skills and topical training resources for staff, which can be accessed anytime on the platform.

Knowledge sharing is a key priority for us. As ADDX moves from a start-up phase to a growth stage, we’re constantly improving our process of institutionalising information. Confluence has been really helpful in this regard. We’ve also been able to customise the way we document knowledge and organise our files.