How to Improve Collaboration With Task Management Software
Collaboration between teams and individuals is the key to success within project management companies. But what is the best task management software and how can PS managers use it to better collaborate? Find out how task management software can help.
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Wrike Customer Win: Mindvalley Award for Healthiest Employees
As you shape your 2020 strategy to build a healthier work environment, make sure to consider the unique needs of your teams: What can you do to help engage employees to collaborate better and develop happier lives? In this article, we highlight Mindvalley’s successes and the importance of health beyond the desk.
Why do companies choose Software as a Service?
The growth of popularity of Enterprise 2.0 on-demand software is remarkable. This growth is not gradual. The pace of on-demand software adoption grows each month and equals 150 % year-over-year, according to Saugatuck Technology research. On-demand software, or software delivered to the customer via the Internet as a service, turned out to be a revolutionary concept in the late 1990’s. Back then, it seemed unbelievable to replace the traditional on-premise software, which you have to buy and install on your computer, with a service. The situation has now changed as businesses and the software vendors serving them are serious about on-demand software delivery.In 2005, IDC announced in its report that on-demand software will represent more than 3.8% of all spending, or $10.7 billion by 2009. In 2006, on-demand software was announced to be the future of software development by many of the authoritative media, such as Forbes, the New York Times, EWeek, and BusinessWeek. Today, business magazines announce that on-demand software customers are becoming more comfortable with the model and that, according to recent research, nearly 36% of large and small companies are considering bringing software-as-a-service technologies into their organizations. About 80 percent of those considering it say they plan to adopt it within the next 12 months. Additionally, 90% of enterprises that are using on-demand software have already stated that they plan to expand their use. Today, we have a great number of examples of software delivered as a service. The applications range from project management to CRM services. Factors influencing the enterprise Why is software delivered as a service adopted by more and more companies all over the world? There are certain external and internal factors which influence the software development and the development of other industries. Here are 2 major external factors: Fast-paced development of the telecommunication industry transforms and expands the former boundaries of software development. Telecommunications are affordable and available from almost any computer. Information workers enjoy high-speed connections to the Internet at home and at work. Almost 300 million people worldwide are now accessing the Internet, using fast broadband connections and fueling the growth of social networking and business software applications. Penetration of broadband services is seen as a key for developing businesses all over the world. Fast Internet enables companies to use software applications for storing, editing and exchanging information online and accessing it anytime they need it. Outsourcing development opened new opportunities for businesses. Business strategists started to pay more and more attention to outsourcing of non-core operations since the 1980s. In the early 2000s, IT outsourcing became a very important cost-cutting measure for thousands of companies. Today, it is increasingly viewed as a strategic planning and outcomes optimizing tool. A recent survey of American and European executives conducted by Accenture shows that 25% of respondents report first-day improvements in business processes with an outsourcing model. The benefits of outsourcing are incontestable: instead of building their own infrastructure and supporting it, companies outsource it to a third party and focus on the core of their businesses. They save on money, time and effort. As a form of outsourcing, on-demand software penetrates deeper into the way businesses are built nowadays. Major benefits for the enterprise There are also very significant reasons why many business owners and CEOs choose to adopt a new online service, rather than use on-premise software. These are the internal factors. Let’s have a look at on-demand tools from a CEO’s point of view, and we’ll see the advantages for the business growth immediately. As opposed to on-premise software, software as a service has 4 basic advantages; 1. It is cost-effective for small and large companies. On-demand software offers lower prices and lower total cost of ownership (up to 50% and more for project management software implementation, for example). Business owners get a faster return on investment. Companies "pay as they go," so hosted solutions often carry little or no upfront cost. The savings can be really huge. For example, in 2005, the town of Stratford estimated that upgrading and merging its two in-house Microsoft Exchange 5.5 environments — one placed at town hall (250 users) and the other at the police station (100 users) — as well as the underlying 10-year-old server, would run $180,000 to $250,000. Instead, the town authorities decided to sign a contract with InfoStreet, an on-demand service provider, to host the Exchange e-mail servers. The representatives of the town authorities do not disclose the exact terms of the contract, but they do say that they paid 20 times less than they would have paid for Microsoft to replace their Exchange environment. 2. Software as a service implies a short-term commitment, which results in dramatic financial risk reduction for businesses. By acquiring traditional software, companies pay significant amounts of money (over $100,000 for CRM solutions) and still face the high risk that the software may not fulfill the business requirements. In this case, there is no refund option. Instead, a SaaS product manager can start implementing software as a service by purchasing 3 or 4 accounts. The users will test the application’s features and determine whether the software complies with the corporate needs. Then the organization can gradually involve more users and acquire more accounts. Otherwise, the company can make a decision to move to another software provider that offers better service conditions. A good example would be Superior Industries, a company producing conveying equipment. They had turned to an on-demand solution when their top management realized that they could save up to 90% of their expenditures on CRM software. Later the executives of the company reviewed the return on investment they were receiving from their CRM service, provided by Salesforce.com, and decided to reevaluate their approach. Their switch to SugarCRM resulted in even greater savings, up to $70 000. 3. SaaS reduces the burden on IT staff. Moving to software as a service contract template means reducing the IT headcount, cutting the cost of hiring and training IT support and reducing IT operating costs. Internal IT personnel don't have to purchase and support the server infrastructure necessary to install and maintain the software in-house. The onus of maintaining a labor-intensive patch and upgrade process is taken by the software providers. With traditional licensed software, companies typically have to wait months for the next release of an application, which internal IT staff will then have to test and deploy. Very often, these installations are time-consuming and do not run smoothly. On the contrary, using software as a service means that a company will receive all the software patches automatically and usually much more promptly. Moreover, by using the SaaS product management, enterprises ensure that subsidiaries in all locations are using the correct application software version. 4. On-demand software usage usually means instant deployment. Traditional application implementation cycles inside companies can take years, consume massive resources and yield unsatisfactory results. With on-demand software, a company can start using the service the moment the provider activates the company’s accounts, which usually happens minutes after the payment is made. So taking into consideration all these advantages, it’s not surprising that more and more companies choose to adopt on-demand software and that analysts believe that this model of software delivery is the future of the software industry. McKinsey Quarterly named software as a service a disruptive force and called for traditional software vendors to focus on integrating on-demand software into their product lines. More and more, companies introduce their on-demand alternatives to traditional on-premise software. One of the best examples would be the project management field, where next-generation, Web-based applications have already displaced MS Project from its leading position, as they offer greater opportunities for easy and productive collaboration. Today, the IT landscape is changing, opening new competitive advantages for early adopting customers. What we observe is, while some companies are struggling with the pain and cost of installation, others are wisely spending their time and money on their core business and become market leaders by leveraging all the benefits of the new technologies.
5 Steps to a Stress-Free Design Revision Process
Creative projects can often stall if there’s a ton of conflicting feedback, which results in endless revisions. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are five solid tactics to get your projects back on track and across the finish line.
20 Things We Learned at Collaborate to Drive Success in 2020
In October 2019, Wrike hosted two Collaborate user conferences in Nashville and London, where speakers from Wrike, customers, partners, and thought leaders shared insightful information to help organizations of any size. Read our list of 20 amazing things we learned at Collaborate that can drive success in 2020.
Where Collaboration is Heading in 2015: Top 4 Trends to Watch
With 2015 just around the corner, it's time to take a look at the growing collaboration trends that will affect the way you work with your team this coming year. While some are merely logical extensions of ongoing trends, a few may surprise you. 1. More Collaboration via Mobile/BYOD With mobile devices out-shipping desktop units four-to-one, one thing is clear: mobile is king. And it isn't just about units sold, it's also about work behavior on these devices. For example: 47% of all email is now being opened on a mobile device rather than on a desktop email client (based on 251 million opens tracked by Litmus). This doesn't mean completely abandoning desktops in favor of tablets, however, as the sheer overwhelming variety of devices brings about its own challenges. Converting files to compatible formats, for example. What is does mean is that team members will choose to work on personal mobile devices even when they're in the office, just for the convenience of accessing familiar tools and apps. As a result, mobile collaboration apps will continue to be a priority for team collaboration. Software companies creating collaboration tools will have to continue investing in mobile applications, especially with the sheer number of customer teams clamoring for a way to work together via their smartphones. Desktop UIs will continue to take a backseat to the growing demand for mobile collaboration tools. And companies will have to adapt. Over the past six years, the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend has been steadily reaching critical mass, giving CTOs and IT departments their fair share of security concerns. But with cloud storage now more accessible and the benefits of allowing people to work from the familiarity of their personal devices clear, expect 2015 to be the year when BYOD goes mainstream. 2. Increased Need for Systems (and Products) that Work Together Alongside the dominance of mobile and upward trend of BYOD, there will be an increased focus on interoperability: the ability of a system or a product to work with other systems or products without extra effort. Think about it: various new work devices coupled with the need to leverage new technologies that answer customers changing needs equals...? A big challenge. A team member using an iPad needs to participate in the same video conference as someone attending via webcam on a Linux laptop, for example, and it all has to work seamlessly. Work is already being done to make these integrations customizable by end users. Services like IFTTT (If This Then That) and Zapier have made automation between social collaboration tools and the larger ecosystem of work apps possible. For example, the Wrike and Zapier integration gives users the chance to create tasks from their choice of apps — anything from Evernote to Zendesk to Marketo. 3. Email Superseded by Social Collaboration Tools As early as 2010, Gartner was predicting that 20% of business users would choose social networking solutions over email as the main channel for communication and collaboration by 2014. With modern business growing more social in nature, that transition has come, and many companies are introducing cloud-based or internal social collaboration solutions. Here at Wrike, we've long said that managing projects via email is not ideal; there's a loss of context when information is consumed in fragmentary replies. There's a tendency for duplicated information as multiple people respond to one email thread. There's a lack of visibility into how a project is faring, forcing managers to spend time manually gather status updates from each contributor. Project management and social collaboration software solves the email problem by giving users tools to stay on top of projects and make communication more efficient between team members. That's not to say email is dead. Rather, it will go back to being used as a direct communication tool instead of a platform for project management and collaboration. 4. The Rise of Users Helping Users But possibly the biggest trend to watch out for is the rise of the community-led knowledge base. More companies will encourage super users and customer evangelists to take an active role in helping other users in the community, sharing tips and tricks in a common knowledge base. Alongside this, expect customer help desks to dwindle as crowdsourced support steps up to fill the need. Users still expect service in real time, so there will still be a need for live operators. But for the more reactive customer service desks, fully fleshed-out wikis and forums will be key to providing critical information that's contributed by fellow users. Where do you see collaboration going? Agree with our predictions, or do you have a different idea of how we'll collaborate this coming year? Share the post or our collaboration trends Slideshare and see what your colleagues think. We'd love to hear everyone's thoughts. Read Next: 6 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch in 2015 Image Credit: Crystal Ball by Christian Schnettelker on Flickr. Some rights reserved. Edits made.