The Challenge

Toggling over 10 different digital tools, such as Google Drive, Trello, Notion, and more, The World of Illusions team felt things were all over the place.

As the business expanded and the team grew, these apps could not scale to meet their needs and weren't optimized for efficient communication. For example, the management team used text message submissions and Telegram chat to manage maintenance and budget approvals, only to find out that they were unable to keep a track record of applications.

Furthermore, it became nearly impossible to analyze end-of-month revenue, organize marketing campaigns, manage PR budgets, or simply see everyone's calendar without a centralized source of truth. "The life before Lark was such a nightmare," says Margarita, "The biggest challenge was to optimize day-to-day operations processes. It is really important to analyze data daily in this kind of business, but we are trapped in everything other than this."

The Solution

Instead of juggling multiple collaboration apps, the World of Illusions team now only uses one app for work now. "I started searching for a tool which could organize my job and my employees' job to make us feel more productive," says Margarita, "a tool which could organize our work and provide us with an all-in-one service. And Lark was that tool."

On Lark, the teams at The World of Illusions are able to access everything from one place, ranging from chat, video conference, approvals, tasks, to revenue insights. Across the company's three locations, each of them has dedicated group chats where local teams can stay focused, while still being able to connect with each other freely within the same app to share best practices and align on broader business goals."

"Before Lark, it took two hours to get everything in one place, but with Lark, it takes just 15 to 20 minutes" says Alina, Operations Manager at the World of Illusions.

Stay updated, stay proactive

Since the World of Illusions attractions span across different cities in the U.S., they have to effectively track their key business metrics like revenue, costs, and inventory data across all locations. To achieve this, they use Lark Base, their most heavily-used feature, to create a dashboard that displays real-time data in a simplified manner. World of Illusions can visualize revenue, costs, and inventory in real-time so they can make changes to operations immediately.

Lark Base has the ability to aggregate budgets from multiple sources immediately and the flexibility to generate automated inventory reminders for employees. Employees in charge of each part can submit daily numbers through the form view of Lark Base, and the dashboard will update itself automatically. Now, the team can see the bigger picture of business performance and project growth accordingly.

Automate daily routines

Since implementing automation tools in Lark Base and Approvals, managers at World of Illusions no longer need to scroll through text messages to locate requests. Instead, they can quickly review any kind of approvals, be it vacation requests, reimbursements, or marketing tasks, within seconds.

The team can easily build approval workflows with the right approver assigned, and automatically send notifications upon submission for managers to review right within their chat. It now takes 75% less time for managers to review these reports. "I really like the way that I'm getting all of the notifications through the chat for different kinds of tasks," says Alina, "Our inventory problems just went away. Lark helps us run our entire business."

All employees and management leaders also create Lark tasks and to-do lists to manage their projects: by attaching a due date to each task, Lark can automatically remind each employee of their pending to-do's in the chat feed to ensure they are consistently meeting deadlines.

Always in-stock

Inventory represents a key revenue stream for the Museum of Illusions, since magnets, souvenir photos, and plates for the "Smash it" experience are sold in large quantities.

The business now uses Lark Base's automated workflows to track the inventory and destruction of plates that occur on a daily basis within the plate smashing experience at the museum.

Beforehand, employees would frequently forget to add plates and track quantities sold. Now, with Lark, employees receive a recurring reminder every two hours to add plate counts. They use Base to easily record the latest counts, add new plates, and create formulas to calculate the total automatically based on the inputs. Customers no longer need to wait and managers get the most up-to-date view on inventory stock.

By leveraging Lark Base for inventory management, the team at World of Illusions has been able to reduce inventory out-of-stock rates by 20%, leading to increased revenue.

Improve employee engagement

The World of Illusions team is mostly international, coming from diverse backgrounds and cultures. By using Lark, every employee is able to gain access to a well-organized Wiki to help them learn about the business, their roles, and more in the same place on the first day. For teammates working on the frontline, all documents and chats are easily accessible on their phones, helping them get onboard quickly during busy work schedules.

In addition, employees can directly access meeting minutes, chat histories, and other useful information from Lark to help them catch up quickly without worrying about missing any important conversations. To enhance the experience further, everyone can view chats, documents, meetings, and meeting minutes in their preferred language, using Lark's built-in auto-translation.

Margarita and the team at The World of Illusions are able to fuel the business with efficiency, thanks to Lark's customer success team, who provide thorough assistance in implementing inventory management, budget and revenue management, employee engagement, and more.

"The customer success team is my lifesaver." says Margarita, "Every single ask I've mentioned was 100% fulfilled. By signing a Lark contract, we feel we are not buying just the tool itself, but also the whole partnership experience."