Picture a world where the systems and tools you depend on seamlessly blend into your work style without a hitch, from logging into all your critical systems with the same user credentials to quickly building and sharing custom views of everything that’s going on from the 10,000 foot level down to the most acute details. All at your fingertips in real time, anytime. Imagine no longer, as Wrike Enterprise now offers a suite of new usability, reporting, and integration capabilities that enable teams to customize Wrike to fit the way they already work. How, you might ask? Let’s dig into the new bells and whistles: Shareable Dashboards Visibility into team and project performance is core to long-term success, but few teams actually have this level of insight. With Wrike’s new Shareable Dashboards, users can customize and share Dashboards for specific projects with real-time activity streams and analytics graphs to quickly access the information users need most often. Custom Reports In order to truly understand what’s working and what’s not, you need to have complete control over your reporting tools. Wrike gives you that power by enabling you to build and save custom reports. This enhanced Enterprise feature helps you surface specific insights into projects, team, and personal productivity to ensure teams are running optimally. Critical Path Efficiency is the name of the game when it comes to managing complex projects with many moving parts. One of the best way to ensure your projects are completed on time is to leverage Critical Path Analysis. Wrike’s Critical Path feature in the Timeline View automatically visualizes the time it will take to complete a project to easily see if the team is at risk of missing a deadline. Okta and SAML Integration Nobody enjoys having to memorize numerous usernames and passwords. Wrike understands that pain and now offers compliance with SAML, allowing Wrike to employ single sign-on (SSO) login capabilities over the cloud so you can use the same logins with Wrike that you use for your other cloud services like SFDC and Google Apps. And with Okta integration, you can also leverage your corporate credentials via Active Directory to log into Wrike. Branded Workspace Teams can make Wrike feel like home by creating a Branded Workspace to replace Wrike’s logo with their own. This might seem like a small enhancement, but aligning your digital workspace with your corporate look and feel can make Wrike instantly recognizable to your users and increase overall adoption. Intrigued? Excited? Ready to give Wrike Enterprise a spin? These are just a few of the latest features in Wrike Enterprise. There’s so much more to Wrike Enterprise, you really need to delve in deeper to capture all the benefits for you and your team. To get started, go to the Wrike Enterprise project management page to access your free trial and start working better and smarter today! Want to see the new features in action? Join us for a free demo webinar on September 10th at 10AM PDT. Register now: http://go.wrike.com/wrike-enterprise-features-2014-09-10.html
If you really want to start running excellent meetings, this post has some pre-reading. First, check out the four-step guide to any perfect meeting for your business (virtual or otherwise), then head back over here. Virtual meetings have the same issues as face-to-face gatherings, but they come with an extra layer of difficulty. What do you do to create a good meeting environment when your colleagues are across the city, across the country, or across the ocean? Here are four common problems specific to virtual meetings, and the proactive things you can do to fix them: Problem #1: Repeating yourself over and over again This occurs when someone isn't listening. You ask for their opinion and they have to ask: "Can you repeat that, please?" Solution: Know everyone's name. If there are multiple people involved in your meeting, the best way to make sure you have someone's full attention is to say their name. And do it first — before you talk about what you want them to hear. It calls them to attention so they focus and you don't have to repeat yourself after they realize, "Oh wait, was that last statement meant for me?" Make your next virtual meeting perfect: Start every sentence with someone's name. "Jill, what do you think about this? Jack, what do you think we should do to solve our problem?" Problem #2: You have no idea who is talking to you Someone in the conference call mentions you by name, asking for your opinion. And you realize you're not sure who she is. Solution: Lead the effort — make sure everyone knows your name. It frequently happens that not everyone on a call knows the other participants. Which means they will not recognize your voice when you start speaking. Instead of assuming that everyone knows who you are and what you sound like (we all know what assuming does to you and me), introduce yourself a few times so people can start connecting a voice to a name. Or a face to a name, if you're using video chat. Ask everyone else to do the same. Make your next virtual meeting perfect: Start sentences with your own name: "This is Jack again. Jill, what do you think about this?" And you can even include your job position for further clarity: "Hey, this is Jack from marketing again. Jill..." Problem #3: Your technology decides to take a break It has happened to the best of us. Powerpoint decides to crash. The microphone isn't picking up your voice. The video feed is pixelated to the point of turning your colleague into an unrecognizable collection of colored blocks. Solution: Have a backup plan. Technology always seems to know when it should not fail — and chooses that exact time to give up on you. Send out your plan details in advance. If you're having technical difficulties, create a protocol for the entire group to switch to a new platform in a matter of seconds. Fumbling around trying to fix a technical issue can add 15 extra minutes to 30-minute meeting if you don't. Make your next virtual meeting perfect: If you use one platform (like Google Hangouts) for your meetings, make sure everyone has a backup platform ready (like Skype) with everyone's username already added. Communicate that expectation in advance. Problem #4: The dog keeps barking You've heard it all before: babies crying, dogs barking, construction hammering, car horns honking. (Once, I was forced to listen to someone munching on chips for 20 long minutes.) Solution: Set video conferencing etiquette guidelines. Remind people that just because you can't see each other, it doesn't mean you can't hear each other. Ask everyone to mute their microphones when they aren't speaking, sit in a relatively quiet area during the call (no busy coffee houses or loud trains), and move to a room away from the crying baby. Make your next virtual meeting perfect: Send out a set of call etiquette guidelines in advance. Don't make it too long — everyone knows how to be polite. Sometimes they just need a gentle reminder. There are some technology issues you can't prepare for: bad wifi connections; calls cutting out. But you can try to prevent additional problems by getting your team on board with these four steps. What do you think? Can you solve your virtual meeting problems with these 4 solutions? What's missing from the list? Read next: 7 Tips for Better Meetings (Infographic)
Every superhero has a secret weapon. Today, we give you yours. Back in January, we released our new Android™ app. Now, our new iOS app has been released to complete the pair! It's completely new, native, faster, and better than ever — the perfect tool for defeating tasks with ease. Check it out now! With our Wrike app for iOS, you can log your ideas, leave feedback, or update tasks immediately whether you're on the train, at the park, or exiting the shower (universally rated the #1 best place for thinking). No need to open your laptop when your phone is always by your side. All your important information is at your fingertips. The Wrike app is now native, which means that it is faster and more stable on your phone — you can add and reorganize all the tasks you want as quickly as they come to mind. It has also been optimized for the iPad, so you can use the app on screens of all sizes. And the exciting news just keeps coming: our updated app has a new, beautiful design. So beautiful that you might have to force yourself to look away from your work. With the new style, your favorite Wrike features will function on your phone the same way they do in your browser, so it takes no time at all to learn how to use Wrike's app. Finally, every cool new tool must come with a couple new bells and whistles. Today we're rolling out 2 new features: Quick task creation. Every task list you view has a "New task" creation field at the top so that you can jot down all your new ideas without pause. Swipe actions. Your frequent task actions now only require one finger motion. When you need to complete a task, tag it, or delete it, simply swipe it to the right. To schedule a task, swipe to the left. Make your coworkers wonder how you get work done so fast. Download our new iOS app in beta today for easy, instant access to your workspace, and become the office Productivity Superhero! Loved the new app? Give us a high-five at the App Store! Any kind of feedback is very welcome. And this is only the beginning. Our development team will be adding even more great features to the new app, so stay tuned!
Meetings. We love them. We hate them. And let's be honest: mostly the latter. For a lot of workers, meetings are synonymous with: "A boring, pointless waste of my time." To change that mentality, we need to change the way we approach our conference calls and boardroom gatherings. Here are four best practices to make sure every meeting counts: 1. Get rid of status update meetings FOREVER Allow me to start by being bold — status update meetings are a waste of your time. 10, 15 years ago, they may have been necessary to make sure everyone was on the same page. Today, we have team collaboration software like Wrike to share updates freely. No sitting in a cramped room at an inconvenient time of day. Everyone can check on the status of projects when its most convenient for them, and they'll never forget who said what. Ask questions and leave comments or feedback online instead of repeating yourself or getting incomplete answers during a conference call. Make your next meeting perfect: Only hold meetings if you want instantaneous, person-to-person collaboration and brainstorming. 2. Only involve the necessary people The biggest drain on your colleagues' precious time is to ask them to join a meeting they don't need to attend. If you set a precedent of only involving necessary parties, your colleagues will stop dreading "useless" meetings. Which means their engagement in your meetings will rise because they will always go in knowing they need to contribute to the gathering for work to get done. Make your next meeting perfect: When you create your list of meeting attendees, also write down tangible reasons they need to attend. More than just: "They're on the marketing team." Try reasons like, "They have prior experience with this type of project." 3. Create a goal-oriented agenda — and stick to it! Decide in advance what you want to accomplish by the end of the meeting — finish a customer email, come to a decision about the next website design, brainstorm ideas for a new conference. Turn those goals into an agenda and do not allow people to deviate in their conversation. Once you have accomplished all your goals, blow the whistle! The meeting is over! This will keep your meetings focused and purpose-driven. In line with only involving the necessary people, goal-oriented agendas make sure you don't waste anyone's time. Make your next meeting perfect: Focus! Go through your agenda in order, creating one solution after the next until you hit the bottom of the list. Bada-bing, bada-boom. Successful meeting. 4. End your meeting with "role" call Don't let the momentum die once you have left the (possibly virtual) room. End your meetings by creating next steps for everyone involved so they walk out of your meeting and jump right back into work. Before you adjourn your session together, ask each person for their action plan. You've just accomplished two things: created accountability by publicly confirming responsibilities, and made sure everyone ends the meeting on the same page. Make your next meeting perfect: As soon as the call is over, send out the list of next steps for every person involved in your meeting. After implementing these four tips, no one should walk out of your meetings thinking they have wasted their time. Have you rid yourself of status meetings and created goal-oriented agendas? Or do you have more advice for creating the perfect meeting? Help us out! We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Read next: 4 Problems with Virtual Meetings that You Can Fix Read next: Managing Remote Meetings
In June we announced that we were one of the first companies to become a Google Apps Authorized Technology Partner. We are now happy to reveal that we have gone a step farther to become a Google Apps Premier Technology Partner! What does this mean for our customers? As a Google Apps Premier Technology Partner, Google has recognized Wrike as an outstanding tool for project management with Google Apps. Wrike will now be able to: Take advantage of Google Apps API information for future integrations, Participate in Early New Product Access/Trusted Tester programs for faster integration rollout, Work closely with Google technical resources to provide Wrike and Google users with the best experience, and Participate in Google marketing events to spread the word about Wrike further than ever. Current Wrike + Google Apps integrations Wrike has been integrated with Google Apps for a long time. Here's a list of the current Google Apps integrations that you can benefit from today: Attach documents to your Wrike tasks directly from your Google Drive account Use the Gmail Gadget to turn your emails into tasks with just one click Import your tasks and milestones to synchronize your Wrike account and Google Calendar If you're already using the Google Apps Marketplace, install Wrike today to get the Gmail Gadget and benefit from single sign-on privileges for smoother access to your Wrike account. More Wrike + Google News We recently released our patent-pending Wrike Chrome Extension to immediately turn any webpage into an actionable task. Our customers have loved it so far, so check it out for yourself. "I just added this extension and used it to create a task!! WOW...the possibilities are endless!!" — Linda, Wrike User We're glad to be able to offer all our customers great Google Apps integrations, and with our new Google Apps Premier Technology Partner status our continued partnership will be stronger than ever.
If you were handed 20 sticks of uncooked spaghetti, 1 yard of masking tape, 1 yard of string, and 1 marshmallow and then told to build a tower with the marshmallow at the top, what would you do? Believe it or not, this exercise gives us a lot of insight into building high-performance teams. During his TED talk, Tom Wujec reveals three major lessons you can learn from playing with your food. After the timer began, the average team spent their time doing the following: 1. Orienting — Talking about the task and subtly (or not so subtly) determining leaders 2. Planning — Deciding the best way to tackle the task 3. Building — The majority of their time was spent here, just getting the task done 4. Crossing their fingers — Tower built, marshmallow in hand, they placed the sugar bomb on top and hoped the spaghetti didn't break Some towers broke. Some towers stayed up. Some towers stayed up and surpassed new height records. So what was the difference between a wildly successful team, a mildly successful team, and a failing team? Three major factors were common among the wildly successful teams: 1. They took an iterative approach. The did not pick one plan and stick it out to the end, hoping their spaghetti would hold. They modified their build as they went along by periodically testing out the weight of the marshmallow against whatever structure they currently had. 2. They had diverse skill sets in the group. Surprisingly, CEOs + Executive Admins worked better together than groups made up solely of CEOs. Some team members were good at managing (we'll let you guess who) and others were good at executing next steps. A good mix of skills and personalities make a stronger, more effective team. 3. They had prior experience with the task. Four months after the first exercise, the worst performers were given the marshmallow construction problem again. They were all successful, blowing previous height records out of the water. Being able to learn from their past failure, these teams enjoyed success the second time around. Here's an idea: Since you're already building your own high-performance team in your organization, why not run the marshmallow experiment with your colleagues? It should prove to be an enjoyable exercise in team dynamics. Or you could simply learn from the short TED Talk on high-performing teams below. It's less than seven minutes long, but loaded with lessons on creating your own top-notch team! Think there are other important factors that go into building a high-performance team? Share them with us in the comments below! Image credit: Photo by Creative Sustainability. Some rights reserved.
We are living in a world of entrepreneurs. Chances are you know one (at least), or you have your own ideas waiting to come to fruition. But ideas are expensive in reality. The question is, how can you get the most bang for your buck? How can CEOs and managers save money while chasing their dreams and accomplishing their goals? Enter Lean project management. It is the star of simultaneous project frugality and product quality for businesses. As a more recent PM methodology, the term "lean startup" is credited as first appearing on Eric Ries' blog in 2008. In the midst of the high-turnover startup movement, Ries evangelized the need for fiscal responsibility and increased production speed in order to decrease the number of failed startups. The idea caught on like wildfire, spreading to entrepreneurs all over the globe. The #1 priority of running Lean PM is to eliminate wasted resources, known as mura. Extra labor, extra time, and extra materials that don't add value to the product or service — they all need to go. Focus on getting something in front of the customer quickly and without spending all your money. So how can you decide what resources you're wasting in order to run lean? Here are some lean product management principles. Declare Your MVP Before you can run lean, you must find your MVP — your Minimum Viable Product. It is the smallest number of features that need to be developed in order to push your product or service to your early adopters. Focus all your time, energy, and money on developing just your MVP, and nothing else. Yes, that means your product or service won't be completely evolved to fulfill all your dreams or the product roadmap, but it will be functional. With it, you can start learning and earning — learning about customers' needs as they interact with your MVP, and earning money to expand upon the rest of your ideas. If your resources are going into developing an extra feature beyond the MVP ("It's just a little thing, it won't take much!") you are wasting time, manpower, and money. And you could be setting yourself up as the next failed startup. Every second and every dollar counts. You'll have time to expand upon the rest of your ideas later, but for now, speed is essential. Focus on getting something out there so that you can move on to the next step: improving your product through validated learning. Build-Measure-Learn Finding your MVP is not the end of the Lean PM. Eliminating mura is not enough for success. Startups fail because they don't create a process to measure progress, learn from mistakes, and improve for the future. Once you 1. BUILD your MVP, you need to 2. MEASURE customer response and feedback, and then 3. LEARN from that feedback and change your plans accordingly. Only give customers what they want. If they don't want it, then they won't pay for it, and you're risking failure by wasting resources to build something customers don't want. Every time you create something new or add a new feature, you must measure and learn to see if the planned next step should actually still be the next step. Remember, time is a resource too, and it's not on your side. Ries said, "Startups that succeed are those that manage to iterate enough times before running out of resources." You should be constantly evaluating your work-process breakdown to make sure you are only spending resources where necessary. This is true even after rolling out your initial MVP. Lean PM is not temporary! More Resources There are many great resources out there that go into depth about Lean project management and how you can implement it for your startup to do more with less. I recommend checking out these three: theleanstartup.comThe official website created by Eric Ries. It details the 5 principles of Lean PM and gives you great case studies from companies who ran lean and are succeeding. The Lean StartupThe book written by Eric Ries about his Lean startup movement. Even MORE detail than the website, it gives you Ries' recommendations for running lean and staying viable. Running LeanWritten by author Ash Maurya, with feedback from Eric Ries, this book of strategies breaks up the steps for successfully running lean — from creating your initial idea, to testing, to choosing the perfect time to raise funding. If you find your MVP and establish a process to learn from your customers, you have fought half the battle. It is difficult. Lean PM is a constant war against the urge to "add just one little thing" and spend time on side projects. But stick to your testing — if the customers don't want it now, you shouldn't build it! If you've ever thought about running lean, have tried and failed, or you are successfully running Lean PM at your company now, tell everyone about your Lean adventure in the comments. There's no better teacher than first-hand experience, and we'd love to learn from you.
If you're an avid user of the Activity Stream on your Wrike Dashboard, you're going to love this new update. Save yourself a click by previewing image attachments right in your feed.If you're an avid user of the Activity Stream on your Wrike Dashboard, you're going to love this new update. Save yourself a click by previewing image attachments right in your feed. Now you can see image previews right in the Activity Stream. When you hover over the image, you also find additional info about who attached the file, when it was added to the task, how big the file is, and file name. This works great for creative teams who work with images on a daily basis. Users will easily spot new images that are added, and can discuss them right from the Stream instead of clicking to switch to the task view. A word of caution: your Activity Stream is so pretty now, you might never stop staring. Only take advantage of this update if you want to be incredibly productive. Enjoy this new feature for the best online project management tool. Happy viewing!
Some days are just harder than others. It's the end of a week, or the day after a holiday, or there was yet another office birthday. (Cake-coma, anyone?) When your team is having a hard time focusing on their work, don't just sigh and hope things will change soon. You can actively help them jump back on the productivity boat with top-down productivity management. Check out the tips in this infographic and get your team moving today. And if you're always looking for more tips to help boost team performance, check out 11 additional ways you can increase team productivity. Share this infographic with your team, or embed it on your blog with this code: Infographic brought to you by Wrike
Are you linking your project steps using our task dependencies feature? It's a great way to keep track of every small advancement on the way to reaching your milestone event. But if someone else is responsible for the next step, what is the best way to let them know you've finished? @mention them in the comments? No need. You suggested a new notification to make life easier, and we've delivered. Now, next time you mark your task as complete, the assignee of the next dependent task will automatically get an email notification letting them know it's their turn to work on the project! Note: Users must turn on their email notifications in order to receive the email. This new notification means you don't have to worry about letting the next person know it's time to start — Wrike will do it for you. So when you finish your work and mark the task as complete, you can rest easy knowing that the project will keep moving forward. And if you're the next person in line, you don't have to stalk the preceding task to make sure you notice when it has finished. Once the email shows up in your inbox, you're good to go. Just another way Wrike is helping you manage your projects smoothly and efficiently, from start to finish.
Crafting the perfect business pie requires a list of ingredients. A great idea, an awesome team, and an actionable plan. But the most important, do-or-die ingredient to make your perfect pie is productivity. Putting the proper thought into hiring the most productive team and creating an effective plan will keep your business from crumbling. So why not learn from those who are proving they can get things done day after day? Here are 8 quick, valuable lessons we've learned in increasing work productivity from our awesome Wrike fans. 1. "Divide complex tasks into smaller ones." — William Fetter, Director of Marketing and Communications, Hexagon Metrology Hexagon Metrology was struggling with the fast pace of work and tracking the progress of their tasks. They found it easier to break larger tasks into manageable — and more trackable — pieces. [Learn more] 2. "Don't waste time on micromanagement." — Daniel Schneider, Senior Project Manager, Secondred Secondred was wasting time with routine tasks like sending daily to-do emails and updating the team on task status. Instead, they turned to a software tool to automate these tasks. [Learn more] 3. "Clearly define your goals." — Kat Holt , Head of Marketing, The Huntercombe Group The Huntercombe Group started every project by stating specific objectives and goals they wanted to accomplish. It helped them complete their work in a clear and concise manner. [Learn more] 4. "Assign tasks to each other and report to the whole team on what you have done." — Laura Roeder, Online Marketing Strategist and Social Media Expert, LKR Social Media With their small, non-traditional team, LKR Social Media found that the best way to get the most done was to hold one another accountable for every task. Sharing and creating together saved precious time. [Learn more] 5. "Create unlimited projects within one single workspace." — Nick Doherty, Managing Editor of Television, SBS Online Nick Doherty found a space where he could place every project and every task so that he didn't have to jump back and forth between various tools. Now he doesn't worry about forgetting to check up on multiple different tools, and work never slips through the cracks. [Learn more] 6. "Keep everyone informed in real time." — Gunter Hildebrand, Managing Partner, Hildebrands GmbH On a distributed team with an overwhelming amount of information changing between hands, it was critical for Hildebrands GmbH to keep everyone updated in real time so no one accidentally worked with old information. [Learn more] 7. "Eliminate the e-chatter and focus on the next step." — Erin Blakemore, Co-founder and Director, VOCO Creative VOCO Creative was swimming in updates and to-do emails, without gaining a true sense of priorities. They now use online project timelines to clear the fog and stay out of their inboxes. [Learn more] 8. "A good collaboration and project management solution is essential for getting things done in a team, especially in a distributed team." — Rurik Bradbury, Chief Marketing Officer, Unison Technologies Unison Technologies was having problems because every team member wanted to organize and approach projects his or her own way. Now they rely on flexible software that fits each user's needs, creating a shared workspace to organize all their work and a productivity time tracker to monitor tasks. [Learn more] What do you think of these productivity tips? Agree? Disagree? If you have other productivity tips that help you at work, share with us in the comments below!
There are sales teams, and then there are world-class sales teams. What sets the highest achievers apart from the average Joe? We looked at research around the web and, of the many factors that help a sales team run like a well-oiled machine, we were most interested in one particular finding: high-performing sales, sales operations, and sales enablement teams are better at collaborating. To create a world-class sales team, your organization must capitalize on collaboration within your team (from individual to individual), as well as between teams (from sales to marketing, IT, support, etc.). We're sharing stats we found online that show why your team needs to focus on collaboration if you want to keep things moving "up and to the right." World-Class Sales Organizations Collaborate Within Their Team A yearly study conducted by the Miller Heiman Research Institute reports the best practices of identified high-performing sales organizations versus average sales organizations. We compared results from their 2015 study to the results from their 2013 study to see how the trends in sales collaboration are changing. Sales organizations were asked to rate the performance of their teams based upon the following statements: On collaboration between management and team members: "Our management team is highly effective in helping our sales team advance sales opportunities." World-class teams are continuing to focus on collaboration between managers and team members, as other teams pick up on the trend. On collaboration between top performers and their colleagues: “We know why our top performers are successful.” Building a world-class team comes down to not only HAVING top performers, but also knowing WHY they are top performers so you can educate the entire organization on successful practices. "We leverage the best practices of our top performers to improve everyone else." (only reported in 2013) High-performing teams take time out of the week to teach the winning behaviors of top performers to the rest of the company, so everyone can perform better. World-Class Sales Organizations Collaborate with Other Departments Stats on cross-department collaboration including the sales organization from the same studies done by the Miller Heiman Research Institute: On collaboration between sales and other departments via shared tools: "Our CRM system is highly effective for enabling our organization to collaborate across departments." (only reported in 2015) With the rising popularity of CRM tools, world-class sales organizations focus on adopting a tool that enables collaboration between teams, instead of siloing their information within one team. On collaboration between sales and marketing: "Sales and Marketing are aligned in what our customers want and need." World-class and typical sales teams are both focusing on aligning with their marketing team to deliver better results. And it's not only the Miller Heiman Research Institute reporting findings that cross-department collaboration helps sales teams perform better. Together, Salesforce and The TAS Group reported numbers on the benefits of aligning your sales and marketing teams: Where sales and marketing are aligned on their initiatives and goals: — Sales win rates increase 15% — Company revenue can increase as much as 25% — Salespeople are 57% more likely to be high-performers And if your sales and marketing teams work together to take your leads from day 1 to the end of a sale: — Email marketing has 2X higher ROI than other channels (Direct Marketing Association, via Smart Data Collective) — Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads (The Annuitas Group) Is Your Sales Organization Collaborative? The trends are clear: collaborative sales teams perform better. So how would you classify your sales organization? Are you highly-collaborative, or do you still have room to improve? Share your team and cross-department collaboration wins in the comments, and help other sales, sales operations, and sales enablement teams learn more about what really works. Thanks for sharing your wisdom! If you're ready to improve team and cross-departmental collaboration for better business results, see how Wrike can help with a free Wrike trial.