Work management: What it is and why it matters.
How to find the right solution for your enterprise marketing team.
A buyer’s guide to work management solutions.
Marketing work is complex. Adobe Workfront simplifies work management by centralizing workflows and providing real-time visibility, automation, integrations, and strong governance across the work lifecycle.
The way brands connect with customers has changed. Consumers expect consistent, cross-channel, personalized experiences. But the way marketing teams currently manage work is making it hard to meet these expectations. Teams are often dispersed, projects span multiple departments, and the sheer volume of tasks, processes, and strategic initiatives can quickly become overwhelming. Trying to coordinate efforts using disparate spreadsheets, endless email chains, and basic to-do lists often leads to missed deadlines, wasted resources, communication breakdowns, and a frustrating lack of visibility. Manual processes, a lack of visibility into the work lifecycle, critical communications lost in email chains, time-consuming approvals, and redundant tasks make it significantly more challenging to deliver better customer experiences at the required speed and scale. This is where work management comes into play.
Work management is more than just ticking off tasks or managing individual projects. It is a holistic approach to orchestrating complex projects, ongoing processes, and routine tasks across teams, departments, and even the entire enterprise. The goal is simple — to align day-to-day activities with strategic objectives, streamline workflows across teams and systems, enable collaboration, and ultimately achieve business goals more efficiently and effectively.
The need for a structured approach to work management has never been greater. Businesses often face challenges like:
- Increasing complexity: Projects involve more stakeholders, dependencies, and moving parts.
- Distributed teams: Remote and hybrid work models require better coordination tools.
- Disconnected systems: Information silos hinder visibility and slow down progress.
- Manual processes: Repetitive tasks consume valuable time and introduce errors.
- Lack of visibility: Executive leaders struggle to see the big picture, track progress, and allocate resources effectively.
Without a proper system, this complexity creates chaos. Critical communications get lost, approvals become bottlenecks, redundant tasks waste time and effort, and it becomes nearly impossible to connect the work being done to actual business outcomes. This guide will explore the concept of work management, explain the crucial role of work management software, detail its benefits, and help you choose the right solution to bring order and efficiency to your organization's work.
What is work management software?
Work management software addresses the challenges of modern work complexity. It provides a centralized digital environment for planning, organizing, executing, tracking, and analyzing work across an organization. Work management software can serve as a central nervous system for your company's operations, connecting people, processes, and data within a single, cohesive platform.
Unlike basic project management or task management tools that often focus on specific projects, a comprehensive work management system takes a broader view. Its primary function is to serve as a central hub or system of record for all work-related activities. This means it goes beyond simple task tracking, and supports:
- Connecting projects and tasks to overarching business goals.
- Managing workflows that span multiple teams or departments.
- Planning and allocating resources effectively across various initiatives.
- Providing leaders with real-time insights into performance, capacity, and progress across the entire organization.
- Streamlining repetitive tasks and complex approval cycles.
While project management tools are often a part of work management, work management software offers a more integrated, strategic approach designed to handle the scale and complexity of enterprise operations.
Find the right marketing work management software.
Scalability
Does the platform meet your current needs, and can it grow with your organization? Consider user limits, data storage, and the ability to support increasing complexity. Enterprise-level solutions are built for thousands of users and complex organizational structures.
Integration capabilities
Assess how well the software integrates with your existing technology stack (CRM, ERP, DAM, creative tools, financial systems, etc.). Look for native integrations, robust APIs, or embedded integration platforms (iPaaS) for seamless connectivity.
Feature set
Does the software offer the core capabilities your teams need? Prioritize features based on your specific pain points, whether it's workflow automation, resource management, complex project planning, or integrated proofing.
User experience (UX) and adoption
A powerful tool is useless if no one uses it, making user experience a key factor to consider. Evaluate the software's ease of use, intuitiveness, and the level of training required. Consider involving end-users in the evaluation process.
Security and compliance
Ensure the vendor meets your organization's security standards and can support any specific compliance requirements (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA). Look for features like granular permissions, audit trails, and data encryption.
Reporting and analytics
Evaluate the depth and customizability of the reporting features. Can you create the dashboards and reports needed to track your specific KPIs and gain actionable insights?
Vendor support and reputation
Consider the vendor's track record, customer support options, training resources, and implementation services. Look for reviews and case studies relevant to your industry and company size.
Team vs. department vs. enterprise needs
A tool sufficient for a single team might lack the cross-functional visibility, security, and scalability required for a department or the entire enterprise. Select a solution tailored to the level of complexity you need to manage.
End-to-end work management with Adobe Workfront.
The work marketers do is complex. It requires a robust work management system that encompasses all tasks, teams, and stakeholders across the enterprise, providing end-to-end management of the marketing work lifecycle. Marketers may struggle to get these capabilities from their current work management system. Adobe Workfront can change that.
Workfront stands above other work management software solutions that may not stack up in terms of scale or breadth of functionality. From the ability to scale across the entire enterprise to allowing work to be connected to business strategy and outcomes, Workfront goes beyond project management to deliver an effective work management solution.
Here’s a closer look at the key capabilities to look for in a work management solution in order to manage the entire lifecycle of marketing work and how Workfront delivers value across the board.
Key KPIs to measure the impact of a work management platform.
Implementing work management software can be effective if you measure certain key performance indicators (KPIs). Tracking specific KPIs provides concrete evidence of improvement and guides ongoing optimization.
Key KPIs include:
- Cycle time reduction: This measures the time taken to complete tasks or projects. Work management tools streamline workflows and automate steps, directly reducing cycle times and increasing speed to market.
- On-time completion rate: This tracks the percentage of tasks and projects finished by their deadlines. Improved visibility, better planning, and more transparent communication contribute to higher completion rates.
- Resource utilization rate: This assesses how effectively team members allocate their time to productive work. Effective resource management capabilities ensure optimal allocation — preventing burnout and maximizing output.
Monitoring these KPIs demonstrates the return on investment of your work management platform, highlighting gains in efficiency, predictability, and strategic focus.
Adobe Workfront powers a system of record across the enterprise.
Workfront treats work as a Tier 1 asset, worthy of the same level of strategy, process, and technological support as other Tier 1 functions, such as finance, sales, HR, and IT. It provides a system of record across the enterprise, allowing marketers to cascade strategy, goals, and workflows throughout the entire work lifecycle. Workfront centralizes all work across the enterprise with standardized, automated workflow processes that are supported end to end across teams, projects, and systems. As a result, marketers can accomplish more in less time, ensuring the right work is done at the right time, so both business goals and customers' high expectations are met.
Managing work effectively is crucial to ensure marketing departments don’t waste resources. Ad hoc methods and disconnected tools inevitably lead to inefficiency, frustration, and missed opportunities. Strategic work management, supported by dedicated work management software, provides the structure, visibility, and automation needed to navigate complexity and drive results.
By centralizing tasks, streamlining processes, fostering collaboration, aligning efforts with goals, and providing actionable insights, modern work management tools empower organizations to operate more efficiently, adapt more quickly, and achieve greater success.
Suppose your organization is struggling with work chaos, limited visibility, or inefficient processes. In that case, it's time to evaluate your current approach and explore how a comprehensive work management system like Workfront can help you take control and transform how work gets done.
Discover how Adobe Workfront can integrate with your marketing technologies to create a system of record.
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