We listen, we develop, we release.  Our clients frequently ask us if we can help them to initiate new projects or work requests AUTOMAGICALLY using a range of their template sets.

Smarter Launch Pad app is designed to assist that process avoiding the need for manual set up, which risks data inconsistency and just takes too long. Details of the request data populates the new assets and updates your existing dashboards, making the whole process more efficient, and avoiding duplication. 

How Does It Work?

Simply start with a grid (tracker) sheet, receive & approve the work request and the Smarter Launch Pad will create a set of new Smartsheet assets, based on your pre-defined templates, with links from the request being shown in the newly created assets and metrics flowing back to the tracker sheet to provide data for dashboard updates.

What can I use this for? 

Any process that needs to consistently track an individual project or activity through a checklist of tasks. For example:

• A Project Request that creates a Project Plan, Dashboard and rolls up to a Portfolio Dashboard
• A Work Order Request that needs a Work Order Task List to track the order through to delivery
• A Job sheet whereby once a job has been approved, a checklist for that job is automatically created and reported on in dashboards at job and portfolio level.

Is this the same as Smartsheet’s Control Center?

 No.  Our Smarter Launch Pad is an app that will create new sheets based off a template automatically from a grid sheet.  This is where the comparison ends.  Smartsheet’s Control Center provides more control over the assets that are created, it has Global Updates, Archiving capabilities and more.

Then where does this app sit?

Smarter Launch Pad is great for clients that are looking to prove that Smartsheet’s Control Center is the way to go but don’t have the evidence or buy-in yet from Management to approve the spend.  

We recommend using Smarter Launch Pad as a steppingstone to prove the concept & methodology works, at a lower level of cost and then move onto Control Center when the business is ready.   The move from Smarter Launch Pad to Smartsheet’s Control Center will be smooth and painless as the design of the “blueprints” and methodology will have already been considered, tested, and can be evolved when ready.

When you are ready to move up to Control Center we will show you how.

In Summary – do you have…?

• Different individuals creating your Smartsheet assets/workspaces?
• Inconsistent naming of your Smartsheet assets?
• Dashboards all reporting the same data but inconsistently?
• A bottleneck in your workflow where you are waiting for the right person to set up the Smartsheet assets manually?
• Do you need automation for data consistency and efficiency at scale?

…then Smarter Launch Pad is your answer. Available by annual subscription. 

Contact us now to discuss how we can meet your needs with this exciting new product.

The post Smarter Project Launch Pad appeared first on SmarterBusinessProcesses.

We learned a lot in 2020 about hygiene, about ourselves, about what we are good at and less good at. We realised the value of human interaction and the importance of mental health, finding ways to cheer ourselves up when the news is so awful. 

We learned a lot about CHANGE. We humans have a reluctance to embrace change for good reason mostly, because it involves risk, stepping into the unknown and that only becomes attractive when the status quo is so bad, anything must be better?  

So what have we learned? 

That commuting takes time, dressing from the waist up is quicker, that by collaborating with colleagues and playing team, gets things done faster, sharing innovative ideas and bouncing ideas about produces results. The more we achieve, the more we want to do more, hey this is addictive. 

When all the normal restraints are taken away, our minds start buzzing, what else can we do? Closed restaurants become busy takeaways, shopping for groceries becomes click and collect and they put it in your car for you how good is that! 

Using Zoom or Teams we see and talk to colleagues around the world and get decisions made in  minutes that would have needed days away from home, flights and hotels. Ok, some of us enjoy that, 1st class travel to exotic places, food and drink to die for… but having just proven we didn’t need to do it, will we ever go back to that? 

Change, when it works out well, is addictive and having seen what science can achieve by mass collaboration, producing vaccines in short order, has opened our eyes to the potential.  Software and data have been used in ways not seen by many before, Even government bodies not normally noted for their agile ways or openness have taken to Zoom and presented daily graphics that help us to quickly see the problem and make good decisions.  

Yes there have been some cockups, excel data being lost?  mistakes in calculations, talk about algorithms when trying to elevate their data above what we all know is simple maths.  But hey… governments moving quickly? Not a natural synergy? We all now realise that we no longer have to procrastinate or wade through glue to get things done. Brexit has happened, Elections concluded, Vaccines are being administered. 

Having worked with Smartsheet, a tool (for collaborative work management) for businesses for the last 10 years, we have seen companies achieve great things when they can work better together in short order and seen the power of addiction to continual innovation but never at the scale of what we have seen in 2020. 

For my team, working efficiently remotely has been our bread and butter for years and it’s been fun watching the rest of the world realise the same benefits. 

So what is coming next? Well good news… now, the world is no longer fearing change but embracing it, our minds are open to new ideas, using our access to good quality, easily consumed dashboard data,  we are happy to evaluate new ways of working especially if that means less time working and more time with family. 

Good news is that AI or Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning are now practical realities which will do the heavy lifting for us, presenting us with those easy to understand graphs and charts that make decisions by us humans easy to make.  

Software has gone from being a “pain in the butt”, to being our servant (at last).  It has to operate on any device we choose, wherever and whenever we wish to use it, be intuitive and helpful and save us 2 hours a day and if it doesn’t? We find a solution that does. 

So in 2021 we have lots to look forward to, software that serves not to annoy, human in person meetings because we value them, not because ‘that’s what we always do’. =  More time with those we love.  And yes we will be able to travel again ….. But for fun and holidays and enjoy time with our friends.  Yes, 2020 taught us a lot, but let’s move on and benefit from our learnings. 

No longer will we be happy to put up with technology that doesn’t make our lives easier, nor go back to commuting for commuting sake when we can spend more time with those we love doing the things we enjoy. 

This is more than just the “ Fourth Industrial Revolution” or the “Internet of things” and 5G on our phones….

2021 is the year we embrace change, be that in ourselves in working smarter or in climate change solutions to make our world a better place for our children. It took a pandemic to shock us into this fabulous opportunity so let’s make the most of what we have learned. 

Bring on 2021 we can’t wait to make Progress!

The post Bring on 2021 appeared first on SmarterBusinessProcesses.

Here are our top three strategies to embrace as we look beyond the now and towards 2021

1. Focus on people, as well as process and technology
2. Build flexibility and cultural change into your strategy
3. Think big about collaboration post lockdown

Along with these three top tips, there’s one final point to remember. Make sure you take your own lockdown learnings forward, reflect on them and consider where to focus to continue your growth and build a dynamic workforce.

Navigating change is never easy, but with the right strategies for success, there are no barriers too high. Empower your people to work dynamically and achieve more than you thought was possible.

See Smartsheet Report: European business leaders on what’s next for digital transformation

The post Our Top 3 Strategies to embrace as we look towards the future of work in 2021 appeared first on SmarterBusinessProcesses.

As we face yet another period of change, as business leaders, our ability to adapt to change and preparedness to be agile in our response to opportunities or threats has never been more key to our success.

To achieve this we need to have sharpened our business processes to the optimum so we have spare capacity to adapt to new opportunities.  

In the business world in the UK we are told that our workers are not as efficient as some of our European cousins.  I find that hard to believe, but if we accept it at face value, ok there are plenty of ways we can improve our Productivity and Processes and we see good examples of companies doing that in the UK and USA, every day. However we are also aware that there remain many companies who are still using the tools prevalent 20 years ago which struggle to collaborate, never mind do it on any platform and it be intuitive and easy to work with.

There are many business leaders who are embracing change and helping their workforce to find smarter ways of working. Yet many are still using the same old tools because they are familiar and not because they are the best, which is dramatically limiting the scope of their progress

Recommended Productivity and Efficiency Tools

As a company we are focussed on helping companies to improve their processes, making sure their workers (users) of IT solutions have the best and most intuitive tools to work with. Let us share our recommendations of great software that could help your company make a step change in Business Process improvement…. They are…. Below and all offer a free trial.

The range of Cloud based solutions grows daily but we recommend Smartsheet instead of Excel and Task lists/to do lists that don’t join up and collaborate.

Appsheet which offers the ability to build cost effective Mobile Apps in a day or two, that work on any device and deliver the exact solution you seek by conditional logic. Collaboration for the masses! Costed in £100’s not 10’s of £1000’s.

Data produced by these work management Apps should be viewed in Graphical dashboards so good decisions can be made, based on Real Time Results. Microsoft  Power Bi is one of those Graphical Apps that reads data from any Spreadsheet, so your management finger is on the pulse of your business ready to act on what you see.

For many workers travelling to work or to a meeting is the tradition, rather than best practise. Since our company started working with companies around the world, we have had to embrace the video conference and screen share world.  These tools have improved dramatically, speeding up decision and delivery times, and cutting down on travel time and costs and reducing our carbon footprint.

We currently recommend Zoom.us for conferencing and screen share but equally acknowledge that Skype, Webex, GoToMeeting and Join.me among others achieve good results. Alas Face time is still one to one… at the moment.

If we manage the changes that are affecting us, then we can seize new opportunities as they are presented.  In order to achieve this our Business Processes need to be fully optimised, allowing us to create in our organisations a culture of continuous innovation, safe in the knowledge that our Key Performance Indicators are telling us what we need to know… in Real Time.

The post 4 Tools to increase Productivity and Efficiency appeared first on SmarterBusinessProcesses.

Copy folders and workspaces, send powerful reports to anyone without sharing underlying sheets, and access more time-saving features on mobile.

Here are three new ways to reuse your work:

Copy Workspaces, Complete with Cell Links

Copy your best folders and workspaces to make any project repeatable. Start new without re-creating anything — Smartsheet automatically copies over all of your reports and linked cells for you. No more manual copying and pasting.

To copy a folder or workspace:  

1. Go to the Home tab
2. Select the workspace or folder you want to clone
3. Right-click and select “Save As New”
4. Choose the items you want to keep in your new folder or workspace
5. Select “OK”

Cell links that are pointing to a sheet included in the folder or workspace that you are copying will be automatically remapped. As a result, the new cell links will point to copies rather than the originals.

See how to use cell linking in the video below;-

Create Reports to Share with Anyone

Highlight key information from your sheets in a report and share it to anyone (even non-Smartsheet users) with a simple URL link. Reports are created without sharing the underlying sheets and viewers don’t need to login to Smartsheet to access the report, letting you share your work more broadly and keep everyone up to date.

To share reports:

1. Open the report you’d like to share
2. Click the Publish button on the bottom of your report
3. Click Get Link to generate a link for your report to share with anyone

Shift Seamlessly Between Mobile and Desktop

Three new iOS and Android Smartsheet mobile app features – applying filters, adding symbols, and accessing favorites –  keep your work consistent across all devices and helps smooth the transition as you move between desktop and mobile.

Filters

The Smartsheet mobile app can now apply filters to the sheet grid, so you see the same rows on your mobile device that you do on your desktop.

To filter your sheet on iOS or Android:

1. Open a sheet with a filter defined on the desktop
2. Tap the filter icon on the lower toolbar
3. Tap Turn Filter On

Symbols

Both the iOS and Android apps support all of the new symbols available on your desktop.

To edit columns and add symbols on iOS and Android:

1. Click the Sheet Menu, which looks like three dashes, in the upper right-hand corner
2. Select Edit Column Properties
3. Modify the columns and their types as needed.  The new symbols are available under theSymbols Column Type

Favorites

Access your favorite sheets faster with your Favorites list on mobile, located just below the Recent Items section of the home screen on iOS and Android.

To add or remove items from favorites on iOS and Android:

1. Press and hold an item you’d like to add or remove from your Favorites list
2. In the menu, tap ✮ on iOS and tap Add / Remove from Favorites on Android

 With these new features, your best work lives on.   Stay tuned for more Smartsheet improvements in the next feature release. 

The post New in Smartsheet: Copy Workspaces, Share Reports, and Streamline Work on Mobile appeared first on SmarterBusinessProcesses.

Previously only delivering on premise client training across the UK and Europe and remote consultancy and support for their clients across the globe, their Training and Consultancy solutions now extend to Open Courses In Leeds, London and Southampton and Online Courses.  See full Course details

Lead Smartsheet Consultant, Richard Rymill said: “Getting to Grips with Project Management in Smartsheet is proving very popular, with delegates regularly having “light bulb popping moments” when they realise how much time can be saved” .

“An excellent training course and put across in exactly the right way. It was also refreshing to have someone so focused on ensuring that we got out of it what we wanted and what we needed”.  NHS Client

See more Client Testimonials

ARRANGE YOUR SMARTSHEET TRAINING HERE  or Contact us to discuss your specific requirements.  We’d love to hear from you!

The post SmarterBiz Academy launches to meet Smartsheet Training demand appeared first on SmarterBusinessProcesses.