Collaborative Work Management: A Game Changer for Enterprises

Mark Mader on October 18, 2016

​Even if you aren’t a baseball aficionado, the movie Moneyballdelivers valuable business insights on how to gain a competitive edge. Focus on the problem. Think differently. And remember, not everything worth doing is going to be easy.
Yet, of all the lessons in Moneyball, the one that really resonates with me is this: “Change the game.” Observe something in the world that could be better, then do something about it.

From the early days of Smartsheet, we saw something in the world that could be made better: remove the drag on innovation and the completion of work by doing away with spreadsheets as the primary way to track and manage work. To change the game, we knew the market had to quickly move from legacy work management tools to next generation technologies that support the competitive advantage and innovation that individuals, teams and business leaders seek.
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During the last ten years, the market has evolved to align much more closely with Smartsheet’s original vision of providing a way for teams to work together in a more connected, collaborative, highly-transparent way. Over time, many of the world’s most productive companies have seen the benefits of this more collaborative work management experience, enabling their people and teams and business leaders to more effectively manage and automate the important work they do day in and day out.

The result of this widespread change has been the emergence of a new technology market category - enterprise collaborative work management (CWM). The first analyst firm to deeply dive into this space is Forrester, who today released their inaugural CWM report, “The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Collaborative Work Management, Q4 2016”; which, I’m pleased to share, positions Smartsheet as a leader in enterprise CWM.

According to Forrester, each of the vendors included in the Wave report have products that enable “conversations that trigger the need for action,” “planned work that requires a great deal of collaboration,” and “work allocation at the team level.” Vendors in this report also have a road map dedicated to “streamlining how information workers get their jobs done,” and provide capabilities to bring transparency to the enterprise.

In the report, Forrester analyst Margo Visitacion highlights common user pain points related to collaborative work management that CWM providers can help solve, including one we feel particularly passionate about at Smartsheet: the ability to create a workspace for teams to collaborate and automate business processes:

“Whether it’s a project or repeatable business process such as customer service or onboarding new employees, people need a way to organize their work. The CWM market provides solutions that enable teams to have a centralized location to work collectively and share digital content deliverables such as documents, presentations, web content and videos.”

As the CWM market evolves, we’ll continue creating a “game changing” experience for new and existing customers by leveraging the power of the cloud, reducing complexity with simplicity, and bringing the tools and features users know and prefer onto a common platform to enable effective collaboration.

Already, over 95,000 customers across all industries, including Cisco, Google, Netflix, Weyerhaeuser, and Groupon, have found a way to work better by choosing Smartsheet as their enterprise collaborative work management provider.

And, we’re just getting started.

To get your own complimentary copy of the Forrester report, please click here.
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​Source: Smartsheet.com

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