It’s not just about the work you do, but how you do it.
Workfront has announced the release of Workfront Fusion, a new platform intended to integrate data across a suite of business applications for more seamless cross-functional project management.
“Now teams can easily connect productivity applications, financial systems, service management and more to workflows in Workfront, enabling a broad spectrum of data transfer, reporting and operational excellence in the seams of the business,” Steven ZoBell, CTO, said in a release following the announcement.
Onstage at Workfront’s annual LEAP conference this week, CEO Alex Shootman painted a portrait of modern digital transformation. Organizations now have the opportunity and access to a wider breath of digital capabilities – a perk compared to the limitations of the past, and a testament to the overall shift towards a more digitized process. Teams are more connected, and tech fills in the gaps to provide a more connected project management process.
“We’re beginning to see the early artifacts of digital transformation” – @workfront CEO Alex Shootman delivers keynote speech #leap2018 pic.twitter.com/Pir4k4RHqq
— Amy Onorato (@ArtOnorato) May 1, 2018
At least, that’s the goal. Team alignment (especially, cross-departmental team alignment) can be difficult to maneuver. Different teams have different needs, and in turn, different technology and applications to complete their workflows effectively. Translating those processes across departments can be tedious, especially when data that has the potential to be valuable across an entire organization, is siloed.
“Digital native work is becoming less structured,” Shootman said.
There are more than 100 business applications currently available for integration on the Workfront Fusion platform, including Box, Gmail, IBM, Outlook and Airtable, just to name a few. Following the opening keynote speeches, I decided to head over to the LEAP Experience Zone to check out the product for myself.
The process is simple. A project manager can mix and match from a curated selection of integrated business applications within the Workfront Fusion platform to build sophisticated workflows from start to finish. Building the flow combines drag and drop functionality, with customizable rules that allow for “automatic” workflow or “triggered” workflow production. Once different applications are added to the flow, individual data from each app is pooled, allowing all members of the team to access and view information across applications in one setting.
One Workfront sales rep told me to “look at it as if you’re building something out of LEGOS,” with each app an individual piece (a building block, if you will) of the larger project.
‘Workplace alignment goes beyond sales and marketing,” ZoBell said during his LEAP keynote. “…This is the foundation of how all work is optimized and automated.”
