by Stephen Danos

Across all industries, IT departments provide the essential infrastructure for companies to operate more efficiently and effectively. They often coordinate and implement technology on a tremendous scale and ensure business continuity, from installing hardware upgrades to setting up single sign-on to improve data security.

IDC recently reported that when considering a work execution platform, IT departments add adoption criteria that move beyond cost, customer validation, and implementation time. Among these necessary checks are enterprise-grade security, scalability, long-term use, APIs and integrations, and the platform’s access to a partner ecosystem.
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When stakeholders want to secure buy-in for new SaaS platforms, IT leaders want to outline value added, quantifiable benefits, and understand why stakeholders need the platform in the first place. However, IT teams that use Smartsheet can access several add-ons, templates, and integrations and Connectors that help improve planning, increase throughput, and streamline operations.

IT leaders can see immediate value for numerous team functions such as organizing your IT help desk, implementing software migration plans, tracking unresolved tickets, and developing new software. Smartsheet provides multiple approaches for streamlining existing IT workflows and managing projects with real-time, executive visibility. Here are seven Smartsheet solutions IT teams can use today:
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by Katie Bouwkamp

by Kelly Anthony 

Which are the best tools for enterprise collaboration? The ones that employees will use, of course … But also the ones that have the strength required by IT.

What today’s organizations need are collaboration tools that first deliver an easy, intuitive, and flexible experience for users. But beyond that user experience the tool must offer robust security, administration controls, and integration with other enterprise applications.

How do you find the best collaboration tools for your organization? Start with a bottoms-up look at what has already been adopted by individual teams.
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by Staff Writer
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Change is hard – which is why managing shifts within the enterprise has evolved into a discipline in its own right. Change management refers to strategies and processes to support individuals as they navigate and adopt organizational changes, whether that’s expanding into new product lines or adopting a new technological platform.

While experts have been studying the best methods of effectively driving change since at least the 1940s, a recent study suggests that the most effective way to speed adoption in the face of organizational change is to focus not on the change itself, but to emphasize what will remain the same.
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by Staff Writer
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When it comes to deploying new software in the enterprise, taking a top-down versus a bottom-up approach is an age-old debate. Top-down refers to software decisions that are made by business leaders based on overall organizational needs and objectives, whereas bottom-up deployments start with employee needs and input, and then bubble up to the corporate level.

Whichever approach your organization takes, the end goal is the same: driving adoption of new software to accelerate process improvements and better business results. But a new report from IDC, Transforming Enterprise Work Execution, found that each approach brings unique challenges that must be overcome in order to drive adoption and accelerate business improvements.
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by Andre Ropeta
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With the growth of team collaboration in the cloud, information workers often waste time switching between applications or copying and pasting information into multiple systems. To work more efficiently, business teams today require a centralized hub for communication and work processes.

Microsoft Teams is now being used by 440,000 organizations, and with usage projected to accelerate, it’s clear that the popularity of this collaboration application is growing at a rapid pace.
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With many Smartsheet customers using Teams, we are excited to increase the capabilities of our integration. These new capabilities will help users harness the creativity and spontaneity of conversations in Teams by pairing them with a work execution platform that helps them transform those conversations into action.
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by Stephen Danos
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The need for businesses to adopt technology and software platforms has evolved at an accelerated pace. For companies and IT teams striving to become more agile, the technology they adopt needs to enable faster decision making while ensuring the administrative controls and data security vital to scaling software platforms across their entire organization.

In a recent report, McKinsey found that agile organizations have a “70 percent chance of being in the top quartile of organizational health,” which is attributed to their ability to achieve customer centricity, quicker time to market for developing products, increased revenue growth, reduced costs, and better employee engagement.

The report also identified characteristics that successful agile organizations have in common, including a willingness to embrace next-generation enabling technology.
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by Staff Writer
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At some point, just about every decision made in a large organization requires stakeholder buy-in – and when it comes to purchasing new software platforms for the business, you need to get your  IT decision makers on board.

Though “shadow IT” (the use of software and other information technology outside of IT’s purview) is common in many organizations, taking a rogue approach to tech adds risk to any technology project. This can make it harder to apply holistic, company-wide approaches and processes, or introduce security risks that non-technical employees may be ill-equipped to deal with.
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When business and IT leaders are aligned, companies are better able to find solutions that successfully support employee needs and organizational objectives with fewer downsides. But while one recent literature review from Stockholm University found that business-IT alignment is associated with better overall performance, the study also noted that for many companies, getting everyone on the same page is typically an elusive feat.
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by Brendan Reed
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by Stephen Danos
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Customer experience and engagement have a tremendous impact on a company’s financial outlook, making these factors front of mind for companies across every industry. Yet customer lifecycle management encompasses more than money.

This process can generate and sustain goodwill and loyalty, help grow a business’s customer base, increase acquisition and retention, and more.
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At Smartsheet ENGAGE’18, presenters from Marketo, SAP Ariba, and CAVU Aerospace shared insights into how they use Smartsheet for customer-centric operations to support customer success initiatives. Here’s how they collaborated with and provided real-time visibility to their customers, leading to refined workflows and improved customer experiences.
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