As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. The key word is "excerpt" - no more than 15-20% of what is presented during the session, to keep the video length more easily consumable for readers.
Workfront focuses on enterprise work management. I have been impressed how they bring structure to a number of previously unstructured processes in media, product design and other areas. These are increasingly digitized but tend to have a complex web of projects, and most have a high degree of quality and compliance activities to worry about. It's not an area where most large transaction process vendors have paid much attention.
More broadly, their focus is hugely important these days as the "future of work" has become the "present of work" with brand new COVID-19 driven WFH formats, the need for new measurement and management skills, new re-opening protocols, planning for multiple and rapidly changing scenarios etc.
The agenda included 10 speakers and a fairly long Q&A session, so the 4 segments I excerpted are meant to highlight Workfront's nuanced perspective on many topics that come up these days as executives review the state of work.
Kicking off my excerpts is Erica Gunn discussing the productivity change curve they have seen in the during the recent crisis. At 3.42, Aleks Bass presents on growing interest in outcome based work management, away from task based formats (I am seeing plenty of interest in this in the outsourcing world as travel challenges force them to work largely from remote locations). At 12:24, Darin Patterson presents an Automation Maturity Model for knowledge work. At 17.57, Alex Shootman, CEO responds to questions about WFH productivity during the crisis and other WFH issues such as 'surveillance' of workers and the need for new leadership skills in enterprises and a related discussion in the room about outcome based work.
