The heavy marketing focus of Workfront - are traditional PMOs concerned about Workfront's product direction?

[DavidCo3]

Hi, Around 9 months ago when we first engaged with Workfront there was no strong marketing focus apparent to us at that time, and in all sales and investigation sessions, Workfront was promoted as being a system for Work and Project Management to cover all areas of an enterprise (IT, PMO, and of course Marketing). However - especially over the last 6 months or so - with the aquisition of ProofHQ there seems to be an increasingly heavy focus on Marketing for Workfront. e.g. Look at the Youtube channel.....the majority of recent videos are marketing-related. Mobile app download sites for Android and Apple both refer to "Marketers" instead of users or team members. The landing page on www.workfront.com says " Finally, a Work & Project Management Software For Marketers" To be honest, this makes me a bit uncomfortable because Marketing is only a small area of our global business, and at this point our marketing team don't even use Workfront. We bought into the Workfront solution to run our whole business, and I am concerned that Workfront will lose focus on maintaining and enhancing the features that matter to the vast bulk of our users. I wasn't able to make it to LEAP this year so haven't had a chance to hear directly from Workfront product managers or other users who are closer to Workfront. What is your take on it? Is this a temporary push into the marketing industry to increase the user base, or will the product be progressively simplified and become less suitable for larger and more complex traditional project management? Regards, David.

[HeatherRe]

I echo your observations and have the same concerns.

[GregBe1]

Yes, it's interesting you bring this up because I've been having the exact same concerns as you. Our marketing doesn't use it at all, and we use it for I/T development projects (actually consulting with clients). It DOES make me nervous that marketing is such a huge focus for Workfront now.

[EricLu2]

Hi: I used to work for a company that was focused on selling a project management, project finances, and campaign management toolset to Marketing. In the last year, I think WorkFront has had a singular focus on pushing into that market. I had the chance to speak to the then-CEO of WorkFront in May of 2015 and he confirmed that singular vision. At LEAP, all of the WorkFront-sponsored events focused on marketing. I applaud WorkFront’s effort to expand their market. They are, however, doing it to the exclusion of the other markets that already use WorkFront. We’re going to put WorkFront in a position to defend themselves with this thread. Let’s speculate on what they might say: 1) The Community Blog site has special interest areas for non-Marketing groups; 2) The Birds-of-a-Feather groups met at LEAP; 3) The new community site does not focus on marketers - it focuses on discussions of general and technical interest and on reporting; 4) (I used to write stuff like this) The leadership and management team at WorkFront remains committed to providing the best work management system available on the market. We believe, marketers tell us, and Gartner tells us that the marketing world does not have a workforce management tool that addresses their unique needs, and WorkFront is endeavoring to be the toolset of choice for marketers. In doing so, however, we are committed to balancing the needs of all of our customers in forging our corporate and product direction. Our product roadmap, in fact, has more features of general interest than features targeted to marketing. We are committed to well-reasoned, steady growth by creating a workforce management tool that addresses the needs of a diverse set of markets. Thank you for your questions, I have no further comments. I think, however, if you look at where WorkFront is putting their money - and that is really the measure that counts - it is all in marketing. I share your concern. Eric ________________________________

[CarolDa]

David, Thank you for bringing this up. I would agree. I did not go to the conference this year. However, a co-worker did. She mentioned that the focus at the conference was on Marketing. I selected Workfront (AtTask) three years ago, because it was unique in that is was marketed and appeared to be designed as a wholistic work management system. Our marketing team uses this on a limited bases for corporate level projects, not necessarily in the way that Workfront is currently promoting it and I am not sure that we have that need. The current might be great for marketing teams of large organizations or even Marketing agencies.

[GabrielaLo]

We use Workfront for IT and General Management projects, but no new developments are being made in this direction. I'm not sure if we need to consider other options.

[StevenHi]

HI All, I take a special interest in this thread and your concerns expressed here are important ones and I think they need to be addressed. Yes, Workfront is focusing on developing our product to become a premier tool for marketing workflows but this does not detract from the traditional IT and PMO use cases where our product had originally planted it's roots, in fact it enhances and strengthens them. One of the key things this evolution toward creative workflows has done for Workfront is expand the versatility and full enablement of a wider variety of practical use cases that can be part of many corporate and enterprise departments, not only marketing but web and software development (note our significant recent improvements to our Agile tools) videography, event management, HR and legal processes, better corporate/IT document management and enhanced proofing tools for better work group synergies and improved collaboration across the board. Marketing team interactions can be very complex and deliverables are many and very granular. We learn from this every day and apply these lessons toward making the tool work better on all fronts and for all groups that comprise the total work management scenario. Keep submitting your feature requests and ideas to us and be confident that we are listening to all great ideas, not just marketing-focused ones and we continue to find new ways to improve the tool for core PMO and IT-centric users so it can be applied to more complex and granular use cases in all organizational domains. Thanks for bringing up this issue and fostering a healthy conversation. Cheers, Steve

[EricLu2]

<> Hi - Please introduce yourself. You write with authority. May I presume you work for WorKFront? What is your role there? Thanks! Eric ________________________________

[TimGo1]

I like the Marketing department push because that is an underserved group (IMHO) that could greatly benefit from the work management capabilities Workfront provides. I'm not seeing a lack of enterprise features as a result of the increased focus on agencies / marketing departments. I think it is more of an AND than an OR. My $0.02

[EricQi]

We have exactly the same concern and during the last several months, we have expressed our obeservation and opinions to WF product team and their management team. As you have oberserved also, in the last year also, most of the new feature priority were given to marketing needs, hence it took away the priority and developer resources from working on other impartant features that PMO, IT and engineering work management really needs. Marketing is a very small % of user base compared with product development engineering teams, PMO and IT teams. So we would like to see the feature priorities to be shifted back to serve the majority of users propotionally, this is especially critical for large enterprise customer case. I believe the right product vision and feature prioritization are exremly critical for WF as a successful enterprise level tool, for long term usage. If people who bought this tool for PMO don't get the same vision and the features that they need to perform their work (especially if this is the larger user base), it is a very serious concern.

[JosephSt]

As the CMO of Workfront, let me start by saying I'm glad David raised his concern. The Community site is the exact right place for this kind of discussion. So let me share our perspective. The short answer to David's question is we are committed to the enterprise work management space. Along with making sure we properly serve our large base of existing customers, here's why we're committed to the enterprise...For our business to achieve our goals, we need to sell our products to multiple departments. We have a 16 year legacy in the IT PMO space. In 2013, we looked at how we could build from there and succeed in other groups/departments. We chose marketing and have seen great growth there. But for marketers, we started with very little for them, so some of what you see as a "marketing emphasis" is adding functionality that will allow us to successfully compete there -- essentially adding marketing-centric functionality that would put us on-par with what we already offer to our IT customers. That said, we went through an exercise in the last month looking at the product roadmap to see what is applicable to marketing teams/agencies and what is applicable to IT and other teams. There is a 75% overlap in the functionality, where what we are building is applicable to both segments. Agile is a great example. Agile Marketing is a hot topic. The Agile functionality we are adding to the product is something marketers are very excited about. But so are the IT customers. As we briefed the Gartner analysts on our Agile additions, both the MRM analyst and the PPM analyst loved it. Another example that was previewed at Leap is work we are doing on an executive calendar -- where the exec can see in a calendar view the high-level scope of projects, statuses, etc. This is going to be a great product addition for the CIO, CTO and CMO. Those are two examples, but there are many others. The person who responded to this post saying that this is an "and" not an "or" is right. We are working hard to solve work/project problems across the enterprise. Where does Workfront go from here? I think you'll continue to see us add functionality for specific teams beyond IT and beyond marketing. For us, doing so increases the scope of our opportunities, and for our customers we think it creates a product that is more universally adoptable throughout their business. Our base is made up primarily of IT-centric PMO deployments. Those customers are important and valuable to us. So while we need to expand into other segments, we know we need to care for the base. And the only way to do that is to keep delivering product enhancements that are meaningful to them. A concluding thought...The Community site is read by our product team members. If there is specific IT-centric product functionality that you think we aren't addressing (perhaps because we're using resources to expand into other work-management departments), please share those here. Again, I like the conversation. I hope what I've written is helpful to you to better understand our strategy.

[EricLu2]

Thanks, Joe! <> ‚ò∫

[SkyeHa]

hi Joe, I see 2 different discussions going on in this thread, and while you've answered the one about functionality, I'm wondering if you would also mind addressing the one on advertising focus. To re-word the question, I'm wondering if you're seeing any decrease in sales from other areas, as a result of the prominent focus on "marketers" in your ads, videos, and websites. By the way, as one of your marketing users, I'd like to agree, most features coming out seem to be applicable in many arenas and not just marketing. From the flip side, we were certainly not that turned off that you weren't marketing towards marketing departments when we opted in. We just saw something that worked and was adaptible to our needs. Not too much concern on who else uses it, frankly. :) Send my love to the product team! Keep up the great work.

[CommunityUs]

Fully agree with you David and the rest of all who commented on this thread. For those of us who do not work for a marketing agency and use Workfront, we are gradually becoming irrelevant from the product map of Workfront. This wasn't how it was three years ago. For an example I don't see any announcements around the pharmaceutical (clinical research) industry. Would like to know from the rest of the participants whether you see some traction in their industries. Thank you.

[JosephSt]

Skye, it's a valid question, though I think the reality for most customers and prospects is brought out in the closing part of your post where you state that you found a product that worked for you. That is really what customers are looking for -- does it solve my problem? So for us, we think continuing to add functionality that is useful for our customers is what they care about the most. Now to answer your ad-focus question directly. When we did our rebrand last year from AtTask to Workfront (and our expansion into marketing teams was well under way at that time), we did an extensive print and online campaign. That campaign ran in both marketing publications, such as AdWeek and AdAge, as well as in IT publications, such as CIO Magazine and Network World Magazine. In 2016, we are not running a campaign in those major publications (or anything similar) for either IT or marketing. Currently, the bulk of our paid advertising spend is online keyword buys and directory listings. For the keyword buys, our primary term is "project management software". We like that term because of its search volume and the fact that it encompasses all segments of our prospecting base. For the sizable amount we spend on directory listings, those generate close to equal inquiry traffic between IT and marketing audiences (maybe a bit more IT). Our target SEO search terms are also terms that would apply to a broad audience. Now you will see more marketing-focused items from us in other channels because we're still building out the marketing segment. As an example, you may have seen a number of recent agency case studies get published. The reason for that is out of our total 52 published case studies, only 6 are agency case studies -- so we're trying to build a balance. To make sure I'm not giving the wrong message to anyone, we definitely have a focus on broadening our customer base and we're seeing success with marketing teams. Based on that, we're doing a lot to attract those customers. That said, refer to my first post on this string. IT PMO is still an important part of our business. We fail without success in that space. We understand that and for that reason we continue to provide product enhancements, and generate leads for IT PMO customers and prospects. And frankly, we fail if we don't build our business where we have an offering that can be expanded beyond the initial department we might land in -- regardless if that initial land is in IT or in marketing. One last point, leading up to Leap we helped form nine user groups (if you haven't joined one, I invite you do so). Those user groups are a mix of IT and marketing customers. That is by design, because we value both segments and need input from both segments. Hope that info is helpful.

[jrieth]

The product has improved a ton in the last five years, but I must agree with many of the posts on this thread: the buzz at Leap, the product release webinars, the acquisitions, and the deep integrations all seem focused on marketing copy management. And it does feel like the basic project management aspects of the product have taken a backseat lately. In particular, the basic project creation and editing interface remains as painful as ever (no undo, no cut and paste). ~Jeff PS - it would be great if Workfront updates supported rich-text like this post does :) ~Jeff

[DavidCo3]

Thanks Joe and Steven from Workfront for providing your detailed and considered feedback. It is fantastic to have this level of interaction with senior Workfront people in a public forum. :) Thanks also to everyone else for your insights. Functionality-wise, I have around 60 feature requests currently open, but to distill down what we would really like to see development focus on: Resource Management / Scheduling (especially timezone-related shortcomings). I know there is a lot coming up in this area, and am crossing all fingers and toes that it is at least 75% of what we want. Browser performance (we have major issues at the moment - currently with support) Undo & copy/paste would be great. Regarding the advertising terminology, I guess the reason that I and other users are a little uncomforable about the word "marketers" being used instead of "users" is that we are the champions for Workfront within our organisations, and on a daily basis we are the ones who support users and promote/defend Workfront in our organisations. Having such a heavy focus on marketing in your material opens up the door for others to unnecessarily disparage it as "a marketing tool" when we all know that it is much more than that. My two cents also. Overall, I'm glad we made the decision to move forward with Workfront and I look forward to a positive and rewarding future with the product.

[KariHe]

Hello everyone, as Director of Product Management, Design and User Experience, I wanted to jump on this thread with a couple comments.

I wanted to echo what Joe mentioned in his prior post.... Be active contributors on the Community Site! The Product Management team is monitoring these discussions. We will chime in from time to time when conversations become product centric and we feel we have something we can contribute.

Our team is focused on building an innovative product that helps your organization work and manage that work better. We cannot do that unless we are actively listening to customer and user inputs. One of my favorite connection points with our customers is the interractive quarterly Product Roadmap Webinar . It's where the Product Team shares what we are currently Researching, Building, and Releasing. Our entire Product Management team is on these webinars to answer your questions and make connections for our research and work.

Let me respond to a few of the requests that were mentioned on this thread.

David - I took a moment to look and wow you are an active user of our Feature Request process(66 active requests to date). Keep them coming. In your post here, you mentioned 3 items.

Resource Management - We are glad that you are interested in this work. Our team is actively building and looking forward to having our Resource Scheduling capabilities ready for customers to try out and provide feedback. We will announce timing for that as part of our regular Product Announcements . Thank you, to all of the customers who have been so active in helping us research things in this area to date.

Undo & Copy/Paste - One of the Product Announcements we made at LEAP and at the May 12 Product Roadmap Webinar was that we had completed research and had begun development on the "Recycle Bin". We will be very focused on Undelete scenarios with this investment.

Browser Performance - Instilling a performance based culture accross the product development team is something we are actively and continuously working on. I encourage everyone to use thier support channel to report performance issues. Support works closely with product and operations to troubleshoot these. User Action Response Time and System Availablility are 2 focused areas we closely monitor.

Jeff - You made a comment about how you would like to see Workfront add Rich Text to more areas of the product. We recently introduced the capeability for Admins to create and send Rich Text Announcments to users. Be sure to submit feature requests for where you would like to see us add Rich Text into the Workfront user experience.

Ashis - You mentioned your organization is using Workfront for Pharmaceutical (Clinical Research) which really is all about supporting the New Product Development process. (How an organization innovates.) Workfront has a healthy and growing population of customers using the product for New Product Development. It is an organizational work process that I am personally and professionally very passionate about. Use the community site to connect with other customers and start the conversation.

Finally, Thank you to all the customers who took time at LEAP to connect with the Product Management, Design and User Experience team. Especially those who stopped by and participated in our product research.

--Kari

[JasonMa]

Kari - I did want to add on to David's comment around the "Undo" functionality. While at LEAP, there is no doubt everyone seemed thrilled with the Recycling Bin feature and it's great that those users' are having a vital need met. However, I can honestly say I have never accidentally deleted anything in Workfront but I sure do drag tasks around and have them indent incorrectly all the time. This can take a surprising amount of time to correct. An Undo feature would be a huge time saver. The drag and drop functionality is very appealing but I now opt to use the "Move To..." feature to move tasks within a project because it is the only way I can ensure precision. I would be more willing to give it a try with drag and drop if a simple Undo could switch it back. As a IT Project Manager, any enhancements that help me manage Workfront more efficiently are always the ones that make my ears perk up. I'm looking forward to the exciting functionality coming up ahead and the commitment to the PMO needs that Joe has discussed.

[EricLu2]

<> Your experience mirrors mine. I’ve never deleted anything accidently. That auto-re-indent feature however, does cause us to spend a lot of time fixing plans. I would much rather see an undo than a recycle bin. Eric

[EricLu2]

I am loving this open discussion. Thanks to the WorkFront Product Management team for stepping up and engaging in the conversation. In the end, I think what we are looking for is measured by looking at the product. How many features needed by project managers in general are making it into the product? Things like Undo (not Recycle Bin), printing Dashboards that have Flash elements (like a Gantt Chart), having more Gantt chart options, fixing the Capacity Planner, and so on. Everyone understands that to expand your market, you'll have to add features to the product that address their unique needs. Go for it. The measure of focus, however is not found in statements of direction, visions, and "trust me" press releases. It is found in the releases. It would be reassuring to see a list, by release of the features/defects addressed in the release, and whether that feature has an affinity with the general PM population, the Marketing team, IT people specifically, and so on. The numbers will speak clearly and plainly. I'm hoping the numbers align with the statements of direction. I'd like to see the numbers. Is that a reasonable thing to publish? Thanks again for stepping up and engaging in this discussion, everyone!