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Workfront Wednesday: Did You Know? A Series of Administrator Essentials Part 3 - Scale

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Administrator

01-03-2022

To wrap up the 3-part series on Administrator Essentials, this week’s blog focuses on scale — the desirable outcome for peak optimization. Scalability does not necessarily refer to adding resources or people, it’s about the presence of clear, shared goals across multiple teams and departments with established communication channels and metrics. Detailed below are four recommended action items you should consider to get out of the day-to-day run activities and instead, put the focus on strategic work.  



GET TOP TO BOTTOM BUY-IN


In order to ensure that everyone is engaged, involved, and accepting of this company-wide strategy, you must get buy-in from all parties. This means collaborating across teams, departments and regions so that all processes and key performance indicators (KPIs) are accounted for. Communication should happen early and often so utilize the Announcement Center to send out personalized messages and schedule a meeting with everyone involved to talk strategy.




Announcement Center messages should cover the following talking points:


  • Why the organization is making the change
  • The vision and strategy for the change 
  • Encouragement to work as a team and how important individuals are to the process
  • What to expect in this phase 
  • Report on previous phase (if applicable) 
  • How the change will impact the individual in their organizational role


For Equifax, an in-person session helped to address outstanding issues, address levels of impact and provide all in attendance a well-thought out plan for the future. To learn more about their story, read the case study here.



SET UP A GOVERNANCE COMMITTEE


Because so many teams contribute to the overall success of your organization, there needs to be certain standards set up to ensure operational excellence, that everyone follows. If you haven’t done so already, set up a governance committee composed of system administrators, group administrators, champions or power users, all of whom understand the strategic initiatives of the company and can provide best next actions.

In the Community thread focused around governance, “Power users are a great way to sneakily grow your own governance committee. They'll be able to redirect their team of users more effectively to streamline the way they use the system, and you'll have people on your side who can help advise you on the best direction to take.”


One of the most recent initiatives of Workfront’s own governance committee, Done Right at Workfront, focused around cleanup — 105 home groups to 10, 137 request queues to 21, for example. To learn more about this cleanup effort, read the blog on Workfront One and download the Cleanup Dashboard kickstart file here.


MEASURE WHAT MATTERS USING CUSTOM FIELDS


One of the biggest mistakes to avoid when scaling a business is focusing on too many goals at the same time. In order to stay centered on strategy, where each goal is aligned to organizational objectives, utilize custom fields to introduce clear standards and drive reporting requirements around key performance indicators (KPIs).


For one Creative Team, measuring lead time per project (request entry date to final delivery) showed that automatic, trigger-based approvals reduced turnaround time by 2 days and allowed for users to be re-allocated to other strategic work quicker. 


Popular KPIs that can be tracked in custom fields are:


  • Service Response Time/Service Level Agreement (SLA)
  • Engagement Rate
  • Customer Satisfaction Score
  • Average Cost per Lead
  • Customer Acquisition Cost
  • On-Time Delivery


Need help setting up these custom fields? Set to expire at the end of the month, take advantage of a free 45-minute remote consulting session with a Workfront expert. Sign up now!



INTEGRATE TO AUTOMATE


Chances are your organization, or even department, does not run using a single application. Through integrations, applications are connected, users can reduce manual data-entry, eliminate administrative or redundant work and ultimately, execute with agility to increase productivity. These automations redirect time savings to higher-value projects. To get started, develop an integration strategy to put necessary processes in place.


  • Review current business processes and define your business’ needs and priorities
  • Identify technology gaps to determine what can be improved upon and ensure that proper security protocols are in place
  • Create a timeline with a realistic schedule, and stick to it
  • Execute a well-defined and thorough training plan for users


For Nordstrom, the integration with Workfront Fusion saved 3 hours of administrative work, or about 175 hours a year by seamlessly connecting Workfront with ServiceNow, and users no longer needed to complete two project creation forms because of automation. To learn more about their story, read Nordstrom’s case study here


Outside of Fusion, Workfront’s out-of-the-box integrations like Adobe Creative Cloud, Salesforce, Jira and G-Suite (to name a few) sync with today’s top enterprise tools and systems, so your team can continue to work with focus and efficiency. To get started with integrations, check out the Integrations and Apps topic on Workfront One for installation and how-to guides or contact the Support team with any questions!