Peter Kim
Peter is a former Content Marketing Manager of Wrike.
Every organization deals with enterprise service management uniquely, but the problems encountered are usually quite similar. On a day-to-day basis, service teams – from HR to IT to finance – are often: Manually juggling repetitive tasks Unable to streamline and organize multiple requests Struggling to manage ongoing change and optimization Sound familiar? Fortunately, you're not alone or without help — Wrike’s latest Service Management template is designed to enable companies to quickly and cost-effectively establish any service team on a secure, robust, and scalable platform. And by allowing service teams to work as one with other departments in a single source of truth, companies see huge productivity gains through simplified workflows and increased visibility without the need to spend on specialized technologies that are complex, expensive, and difficult to ramp up. This is especially important for SMBs, which face challenges with security, budget, and cross-functional work. As their business scales, they will need a solution that can grow with them rather than taking on the time-consuming task of seeking out multiple other solutions to meet new demands. We’re bringing all work onto one platform. Great service management starts here Wrike’s latest template introduces consolidated request management processes that reduce manual and mundane work via automation, streamlined requests, and knowledge base management. It's the simplest and most effective way to establish the single source of truth your service management teams need to achieve great productivity and exceptional work management. Powerful, versatile, no-code tools like those provided by our IT service management template put everyday workers and citizen developers in control of their workflows so that they can spend less time on busywork and more on the projects that matter. Consolidate request and service management Streamline work and consolidate request and service management processes with request forms that are easily customizable and configurable to fit your organization’s unique workflow and needs. Unlock advanced project visibility Comprehensive, accessible dashboards provide a bird's-eye view of all the work your service management teams are involved in. Effortlessly monitor task progress, status updates, incidents, new service requests, and more. Also, view and categorize service tickets based on custom item types — such as description, location, or a specific team. Empower teams to succeed Don't leave your organization in the dark — this service management plan template provides service teams with the tools to enable self-service and build a cross-departmental knowledge base. Workers can easily access information through organized knowledge articles, reducing the overall number of help tickets and queries. Articles can also easily be built and tracked through defined workflows and tools within the template. Service management excellence Service teams represent the backbone of workplace operations — it’s essential that they have everything they need to effectively deliver their services and break down silos and barriers between teams. Wrike continues to meet growing service needs and empowers both technical and non-technical teams alike to do better work. Another recent example is Wrike's new email communication functionality with non-Wrike users. This feature moves communications with non-Wrike users, like external email exchanges, directly into Wrike. It reduces overall SaaS sprawl and removes barriers to visibility and better workflow, adding even more power and utility to the Service Management Template. Check out for yourself today how much easier it is to streamline, consolidate, and optimize your IT service management workflows. Wrike users on the Business, Enterprise, and Pinnacle plans can get started with the Service Management Template here.
Walmart Canada's Continuous Improvement team started off where many organizations do – using a spreadsheet to manage multiple complex projects and a rapidly changing operation. Tasked with developing new business recommendations for their Transportation department, along with managing thousands of employees, stores, vendors, and supply chains, the Continuous Improvement team quickly realized they needed a solution that provided the visibility and scalability needed to succeed. Since it integrated Wrike into their systems, Walmart Canada has been able to better consolidate, view, and accelerate their workflows across the board. They've also reduced project approval times to near zero and cut the number of regular status updates and calls significantly. The Continuous Improvement team utilized Wrike to create their ideal workplace of the future, customized to work exactly the way they want. Today, their success with Wrike has led to its deployment across other Walmart teams. We recently took some time to chat with Francis Lalonde, Vice President of Transportation at Walmart Canada, and Carolyn Lum, Director, Transportation Continuous Improvement at Walmart Canada, to get a better understanding of how they discovered Wrike, their integration journey, and how it’s helped them do their best work. Carolyn Lum, Director, Transportation Continuous Improvement at Walmart Canada Q: What drove you to find a new work management solution? A: “We needed to make our process better. Walmart is innovating in so many ways, and we saw this as an opportunity to get even better.” Q: Why did you decide to use Wrike? A: “Walmart moves at such a fast pace, and decisions and directions can change within even the same week. It allows us to make the changes as we want on our schedule without having to rely on any sort of third-party development team to make those changes for us.” Q: What Wrike feature or functionality do you love most? A: “Multiple views — so no matter what tool someone is working in, they can easily and seamlessly work within this one tool. And Reporting is a big deal as well. My executives really wanted a high-level, bird's-eye view of where we are. And the fact that we can do that in real time is amazing. We also use Wrike Analyze a lot. It's live, it's in real time, and we can report on any custom field we created.” Q: What does the future of Wrike look like for Walmart Canada? A: “Every day, on our internal application store where we have our Walmart desktop app, I'm getting emails asking — can you talk to me about this tool? Can you talk to me about this solution? Can you walk us through how you're using it? The fact that everyone wants to implement the same ways of working that we have is really quite remarkable.” Q: How did the Continuous Improvement Team come about? A: “I created the Continuous Improvement Team two and a half years ago. What I really wanted was to have a team that would help create that culture of continuous improvement … so it's not just a team of project managers. I wanted to build a team that would create a support network for our entire ecosystem. Their responsibility is to support teams with reporting, analytics, and everything they need to deliver on their initiatives. And that's what the team has been doing brilliantly.” Q: What do you love most about your job? A: “I love a million things about my job. I love that I get to service all of our customers on a daily basis. I love that we've built a team that’s relentlessly focused on people. And that's one of the things that I'm most passionate about, seeing that our people are growing, they're getting to a different level in terms of maturity in terms of performance, and have the chance to transform the business as well.” Q: What do you love most about Wrike? A: “Wrike is scalable and easy to use. And it really brings everything together. I'm also not the most technical guy, and my team will tell you that I'm using it every day. It's easy for me to navigate through all the details. So if dinosaurs like me from the system side are able to go in and really adopt it, everybody else can go in there and use that solution in a very easy manner.” Q: Where do you see your journey with Wrike taking you? A: “The fun thing is other departments now want to get on the journey. We've been giving demos, probably once a week, for about a year and a half with other folks because others want to get on the program.” Learn more about the success of Walmart Canada and how they use Wrike to achieve operational success by watching the full video.
The hybrid work model is here to stay, folks. The great work-from-home experiment of the past 18 months has been a success; companies realize that employees can be just as productive working from anywhere, and workers are embracing the flexibility of a remote or hybrid workplace. Some 83% of workers want their company to offer a hybrid work model post-pandemic, and 39% would like the option to work from home up to four days per week. Many hyper-growth companies are listening to employee preferences, with 63% implementing a “productivity anywhere” workforce model and introducing the possibility of a hybrid workplace for employees. It’s clear that hybrid work is becoming a permanent part of how we work, but what are the potential challenges facing such a model – especially for culture? The hybrid work model can lead to longer working hours, micromanagement, a dissolution of traditional company culture, and opportunities for miscommunication. Thankfully, there’s several ways to avoid these pitfalls and instead come out ahead by building a more productive, streamlined, and positive work culture. Building a positive hybrid workplace Along with the hybrid work model comes a noticeable change in company culture. Businesses are concerned with how they can preserve culture with a semi- or predominantly remote workforce. However, it’s important to keep in mind that culture is much more than just office perks and team-building events. Looking beyond perks Culture begins with a company’s unique approach to work. Consider the critical characteristics of your ideal culture and how they can be achieved in a hybrid workplace. For example, providing flexibility to employees and trusting them to complete their work from home will provide an excellent framework for creating a transparent, autonomous company culture. Free lunches and snacks won’t help employees too stressed or busy to eat it. Helping your employees feel more comfortable about the work they do and the way they do it contributes much more to building a healthy hybrid workplace culture. Setting employees up for success A positive culture starts with positive workers, so focus on ensuring employees have everything they need to be productive at work. This includes: Ensuring employees have the tools and equipment they need to work comfortably at home – including options if the internet or power goes out, as well as funding for new equipment Implementing new training opportunities to allow remote workers to gain the same level of onboarding and upskilling as in-office workers Making sure remote managers are trained in supervising, managing, and coaching from a distance, along with remote team-building skills Ensuring that your hybrid and work-from-home employees have ample opportunity to engage with management Employee involvement and work-life balance Changing to a hybrid work model is an excellent opportunity to reassess what constitutes great company culture. Recruitment company Morgan McKinley used surveys during the pandemic to discover what was most important to workers and, based on the results, built a culture that offered a better work-life balance. To do this, they implemented ideas such as a company-wide 3 p.m. finish on Friday afternoons, cutting hour-long meetings to 45 minutes, and encouraging employees to block out lunchtime each day on their calendar. You’ll notice that all of these new measures provide equal benefits for both in-office and remote employees. When building your culture, ask employees what’s most important to them and create a company culture that benefits all workers. Better tools improve hybrid workplace culture Perhaps the most critical aspect of hybrid work is creating a digital workspace that enables all employees to work together from anywhere. Collaboration is a key cornerstone of hybrid work culture, and it’s a great place to start. These tools will ensure you are supporting in-house and remote workers to collaborate. Your digital workspace is essential to making sure remote workers don’t feel isolated from their team or that office workers aren’t getting more opportunities. All of this equates to happier employees, less turnover, and more productivity — critical foundations for a solid workplace culture. Digital tools also support a flexible workplace by allowing employees to work to their own schedules. An emerging trend in hybrid work is asynchronous communication, which enables teams to communicate without the expectation of needing to respond immediately. Team members will have all the information they need to complete a task and complete it in their own time. Asynchronous communication negates the need to be ‘always on.’ Employees can send questions or provide status updates without everyone being connected 24/7. You can also encourage teams to send daily or weekly updates, so everyone can be transparent in what they’re working on day-to-day. So, what exactly are the essential tools employees need to foster a better collaborative culture in a hybrid environment? They include: A comprehensive digital workspace that captures all work so that projects, resources, communications, and status updates are accessible to remote, hybrid, and in-office workers Asynchronous communication tools to combat the ‘always on’ mentality and minimize excess meetings Security features to ensure the safety of company information and employee data Companies can also achieve a comprehensive digital workspace without bombarding teams with excess tools that can cause miscommunication and unnecessary complexity. Businesses should focus on two core tools to facilitate the hybrid model and enable a better culture of digital collaboration. IM communications tools An IM tool such as Slack or Microsoft Teams allows employees to engage with each other regularly. Channels can be set up for teams and employees with similar interests to ensure all employees feel included. IM tools allow employees to have instant and direct access to their colleagues no matter where they are working and help support relationship building in a hybrid environment. Streamlined IM communication and coordination can contribute immensely to building a healthier work culture and environment. CWM platform A collaborative work management platform is the core component of the complete digital workspace needed to facilitate hybrid work. Teams can track all projects and tasks in one place and gain full visibility over work across teams and departments. These platforms allow for asynchronous communication, enabling workers to be flexible with when and how they work. They also integrate with other tools, allowing all work data to be brought together and stored in one workspace, minimizing the need to be logged in to several platforms at once. CWM platforms also have built-in security features designed to support hybrid teams to work from anywhere. Security features It’s critical to ensure that work and information is protected regardless of where employees work. As businesses become increasingly digitized, bad actors will continue to devise new ways to access and potentially take advantage of your unsecured data. Provide your IT teams with the tools they need to rigidly safeguard your company’s work, perform structured audits on a regular basis, as well as ensure your employees are educated on proper security protocols and practices before they delve into the world of digital collaboration. It’s time to reimagine the way we work The way we work has changed for good, making it the perfect time to reevaluate your workforce based on the changing needs and behaviors of your business and employees. For your company to be resilient and provide the best possible workplace culture, you need to reevaluate work through a lens of flexibility. A collaborative, autonomous culture for workers provides considerably more benefits than the closed, siloed work culture of the past. A compassionate, flexible work environment will increase employee happiness and engagement, and it’s become more important than ever to break down silos in a hybrid workplace to ensure that employees are dedicated to teamwork and collaboration no matter where they are. For more resources on hybrid work culture, check out: Return to Work Management Guide: How to Manage a Hybrid Team Research Uncovers the Technology That Will Power Hybrid Work An Introduction to Hybrid Team Management A Guide to Hybrid Remote Working WFH or Hybrid Office? How to Know Which Works Best for You
The following year will prove to be a critical time for marketing teams as they look to re-engage with their core customers in a post-pandemic world. To do so successfully, however, teams will have to choose whether to go fully remote, stay in-office, or develop a hybrid work environment. Furthermore, teams will have to do more with less and leverage key technologies to keep up with the ongoing digital transformation of business. To address these issues, Wrike recently held a Reuters Workshop roundtable to discuss how marketing leaders from organizations like Hallmark, Carmax, and others are preparing for the future of work. We’ve collected some valuable insights on the problems they’ve encountered so far and the solutions they’re exploring to address upcoming marketing trends. Hallmark Hallmark is seeing exponential growth at the moment due to moving towards an omnichannel brand from a primarily retail brand. However, a spokesperson noted that the key to navigating this growth comes down to staying organized – something new technology like work management solutions can facilitate. They also supported the continuation of remote work, as the removal of time-wasting commutes and other in-person obligations opens the door to better creativity and uninterrupted workflow. Carmax A spokesperson from Carmax had been a proponent of remote work for years but hasn’t been able to support that aspiration fully until now. They are prioritizing building out a design team and work platform this year. To achieve their ambitious goals, they are looking to integrate an enterprise-level design system capable of maintaining consistency with their visual brand communications and promoting efficiency across their distributed product design and engineering teams. Prepare to hit the ground running In our Reuters Workshop, we sat down and talked with some of the best and well-prepared leaders about the marketing trends of the future. However, over a third of them expressed doubts that they'd achieve their 2021 growth goals, and stated that their martech stacks failed to meet the needs of their team. Taking advantage of and leveraging the right technologies will become key to succeeding in the new age of digital collaboration. If you’re looking to uplevel your own teams and processes in preparation for a post-COVID era, start a free Wrike trial today.
Employee conflict is a natural and regular part of any collaborative environment, with 85% of employees worldwide experiencing some form of conflict during their career. However, hybrid work can make dealing with conflict more difficult than it would be in person. Lack of face-to-face interaction, the absence of additional context, and loss of conversational nuance can cause conflicts to go unsolved and fester over time – leading to poor performances, low quality of work, and employee turnover. Thankfully, issues with conflict resolution in a hybrid environment are just as solvable as in-person ones. We’ll take a look at some of the best conflict resolution techniques to prepare your teams for virtual conflict in the new digital world. Filling in the blanks Understanding motive and context is a key part of processing new information and surprises – especially unwelcome ones. When employees are uncertain about why their request was overturned or proposal was rejected, they can tend to assume the worst and take it personally. Left unresolved, this lack of context evolves into a lasting negative experience that has long-term repercussions on employee relationships and productivity. A straightforward solution to this type of conflict in the workplace is a work management platform that can automatically provide the necessary context and historical reference for the decisions being made. Adopting a solution that keeps track of which decisions are being made and why, along with clear visibility into workflow and blockers, can help with providing some necessary context for work conflicts. It can also help employees collect all the facts and communicate clearly when conflict arises. It also helps to always overcommunicate when conversing directly. This doesn't mean dipping into micromanagement but rather being honest and abundantly descriptive when dealing with conflict and potential risks. Details and intent tend to get lost in translation, and virtual communication tools are no exception. Setting an example Although in-office employees can just drop by a manager’s desk to clarify something quickly in an office setting, some employees may have trouble asking questions in virtual environments. Encourage managers to be more proactive about conflict in the workplace to help resolve issues and miscommunications before they occur. Managers can circumvent conflict prematurely by integrating face-to-face kickoffs when onboarding new teams. This encourages people to familiarize themselves more with team members and how each part of the company functions, making it easier for employees to approach one another. Managers should also maintain consistent one-on-one checkups and conversations and lead by example by presenting a measured and professional demeanor when resolving their own conflicts. Work as one – not alone Some employees may feel more isolated in hybrid work environments. Lack of personal communication, water cooler talk, and general uncertainty about how they fit in with the team can lead to problems down the road regarding productivity and collaboration. A great way to work around this problem is to recognize individuals often and reward teams for working together. Take the time to celebrate wins at work, as well as personal occasions such as birthdays and work anniversaries. Create incentives to accomplish work together and acknowledge one another for it as well. It’s the key to helping people understand that each team member is looking out for one other and prevents individuals from jumping to conclusions when conflict in the workplace inevitably occurs. Making it work for you Each of these conflict resolution techniques will help you develop a strong basis for dealing with conflict in your teams as we move forward into the digital age. Preparing your teams to face these challenges can greatly improve productivity, morale, and quality of work over time and will be essential to succeeding in a hybrid work environment. Looking to provide better context and collaboration in your teams? Start a free Wrike trial today.
Monumental Sports & Entertainment is a leading sports and entertainment group with a mission to showcase great sports teams and entertainment venues while giving back to their communities. Committed to “raising the game” through extraordinary experiences powered by innovation, Monumental works with teams like the Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards, Washington Mystics, and Capital City Go-Go. How Monumental Sports built a streamlined, efficient design process with Wrike Tasked with creating assets for their marketing efforts, Monumental’s design team realized that they needed a management solution for their many complex projects. With new requests coming in to designers from a mixed variety of collaboration tools, a standardized process was sorely needed. Without it, teams were spending too much time on administrative tasks, file management, and communication, rather than on creative efforts. Wrike’s powerful suite of tools enabled Monumental to find the best solutions for their design needs. Through Wrike, Monumental streamlined project intake with customized request forms. This enabled them to consolidate all incoming requests and centralize each stage of the creative process using Wrike's Adobe Creative Cloud integrations and the MediaValet DAM. Monumental was also able to process workloads more efficiently thanks to the improved visibility provided by Wrike. Monumental’s team of four designers leveraged Wrike’s versatile features to create over 640 assets in a quarter and upload around 110,000 assets to MediaValet through Wrike's integration. “Anyone who is looking to manage multiple projects daily should consider Wrike ... Our designers can work within an environment that is easy to understand and provides them with the ability to communicate and share easily with clients. As an organization, we now have a standard process for requesting all-new creative and storing procedures for easily accessing, which saves us time and money.” - Lori Meyers, Manager of Digital Assets, Monumental Sports & Entertainment Learn more about how Monumental Sports & Entertainment achieves success through Wrike: Read the Monumental Sports case study Looking to uplevel your own teams and processes? Start a free Wrike trial today.
