For a company that helps field service teams work better together, Sytex faced their own collaboration puzzle when COVID hit. Their mobile app was connecting back office teams with field crews across the country, but internally, their own teams were drifting apart.

“Teams became very segmented,” their Mariano Lisiotti, Sytex's CEO recalls. “No one knew what was happening in other departments, and everyone had their own way of documenting things.”

Their setup at the time - Discord for chat, Google Docs for knowledge - wasn't doing them any favors. Documents multiplied without structure, living wherever people happened to save them.

The company helping others collaborate needed to solve their own connection challenge first.

Looking for answers

During their time at Y Combinator, Sytex began exploring options. Their journey through different tools was telling: they'd been on and off GitHub, tried local platforms, and gave Notion a thorough test drive. Notion could do everything - which turned out to be part of the problem.

"We needed something focused," their CEO explains. "Primarily a knowledge base and a place to share work asynchronously."

Even for project management, they'd learned this lesson the hard way. After trying to use Notion for tickets, they found that sometimes less is more, eventually settling on Linear for that specific need.

Their documentation wishlist was refreshingly simple:

• A straightforward interface
• An open platform for transparency
• Minimal setup headaches
• The ability to share public documents

Mariano led the search himself, looking for something that could tackle their real pain point: the communication gap that remote work had created.

Teams had become isolated islands, each with their own documentation methods and information silos. They needed a solution that could make everything transparent and public, letting everyone see what was happening across teams.

The team agreed - sometimes the simplest solution is the right one.

Making the switch

The rollout was refreshingly drama-free. "We had a meeting to explain it," their CEO recalls.

What happened next was organic. Teams began commenting and creating their own document areas for different departments. They organized channels their own way, with a dedicated news channel where the CEO posted monthly updates and teams shared their progress.

Soon, everything found its home in Slite:

• Company policies
• Onboarding documents
• Culture documentation
• Marketing content
• Product ideas
• Designs (before moving to Linear)

The real magic appeared in their real-time collaboration. "We use it extensively for documenting customer calls and meetings, with multiple people building meeting minutes simultaneously," their CEO explains. The comments feature proved especially useful, "particularly with the improvements for navigating comments in long documents."

The impact

For Sytex, success is measured in the freedom their team now has to work from anywhere while staying connected. "The biggest win is in terms of communication and team engagement, especially being remote," their CEO explains.

The change is tangible:

1. Teams stay synced without constant meetings
2. Everyone has access to the latest information
3. Side documents have disappeared (except personal notes)
4. Multiple people can build meeting minutes together in real time

When asked to describe their solution to others, Mariano puts it simply:

"It's a knowledge base and documents repository for everything happening in the company that you can use to promote transparency and communication."

For a company that started with scattered Google Docs and segmented teams, that transparency has made all the difference. Remote work no longer means disconnected work.

The last word

Remote work isn't going anywhere. Neither are the challenges of keeping teams connected. But sometimes the best solutions are the ones you barely notice - they just work.

For Sytex, the path from scattered docs to structured knowledge wasn't about reinventing the wheel. It was about finding the right size wrench for their particular bolt.

"We tried the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach. Turns out we just needed a place for people to write things down and find them again."

These days, when new team members join Sytex, they don't get a lecture about documentation or a 50-page manual about their knowledge management system.

They just get a login, a quick tour, and a simple truth: everything you need to know is here.

And if it isn't, well, now you know where to put it.

It’s the same road for your remote team too, you know.

Like Sytex, teams everywhere are finding their own path to better remote work. If their story sounds familiar, you might be ready to explore Slite for your team.

Book a demo to see how it could work for you.

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