One of our customers, the Australian company Aduro Pty Ltd., is an expert in e-learning. Their platform enables teachers and managers to upload their learning materials online, so that students can play them on any device anytime. This is a great step forward in speeding up the lesson preparation process and a great way to save a lot of money on organizing training sessions. Whew, do you wish your school had adopted this platform a long time ago?
Of course, we couldn’t help asking Aduro which ways of adopting Wrike worked best for their team. We believe their practices will help you bring newcomers on board even quicker and easier, whether you have just created a Wrike account, or you are planning to extend it to new departments or team members!One of our customers, the Australian company Aduro Pty Ltd., is an expert in e-learning. Their platform enables teachers and managers to upload their learning materials online, so that students can play them on any device anytime. This is a great step forward in speeding up the lesson preparation process and a great way to save a lot of money on organizing training sessions. Whew, do you wish your school had adopted this platform a long time ago?
“For me, studying is all about the pleasure of learning and the passion to get better,” says Martin Schwall, Business Development Manager at Aduro Pty Ltd., “When it comes to bringing a new tool for the team, I always try to catch their attention by inspiring a personal interest in it. I also try to find the best ways of fitting it into the team’s current working practices, be it the workflow or the other tools and devices they use."
The tips Martin has shared with us are based exactly on these principles:
1. Make the benefits clear.
Resistance to changes is natural for all teams, and it can be the main stumbling block when it comes to a new tool. That’s why it’s important to dedicate some time for the initial presentation and make sure that the benefits outweigh the inclination to stick to your team’s old habits.
Getting prepared for the initial presentation is equally important. You need to focus more on “why” than on “how.” You don’t need to go too deep into details. Be ready to handle critical objections, and so on. You can find all these and many more useful tips in the 1-2-3 guide to cultivating a productivity habit with Wrike.
2. Use project templates.
You might consider creating templates for all similar projects that your team can simply duplicate when needed. For your team members, this really facilitates the launching of a new project, especially during the first weeks of using the software. And once they see how much time it saves, they will be much more enthusiastic about the new project management tool!
If you used MS Project to manage your projects prior to Wrike, you can easily import them into your new workspace.
3. Make the most of e-mail integration.
One of the hardest things for a project manager is to make sure everyone regularly updates their tasks and informs the rest of the team about the changes.
If your team uses e-mail a lot in their day-to-day work, e-mail integration greatly helps to develop this habit of regularly updating. With Wrike’s help, your team members can easily update and comment on a task, or create a new one right from their inbox!
And with Wrike’s add-ins for Outlook and Apple mail, they can actually do it in the interactive Wrike tab while still staying in their e-mail client. This way, your team doesn’t need to change their habits to keep the project data up-to-date.
4. Ensure the work guidelines are easily accessible.
If you need some special guidelines to fit Wrike into your working process, it’s handy to write them down and keep the documents online.
You can create a special folder in Wrike for that and attach files to the folder description. This way, team members can always access the docs to freshen their memory and avoid potential misunderstandings.
Also, you’ll save time on explaining the guidelines to the future newcomers.
5. Don’t forget about mobile apps.
As Martin mentioned before, it’s always better to proceed from tools and devices that your team already uses. We bet most of your team members have either an iPhone or Android.
In this case, they can easily stay on top of the projects and update tasks through their preferred gadgets, thanks to Wrike’s mobile apps. Now it’s easy to access their workspace wherever they are!
Why is it important to keep learning?
As a small bonus, we’ve asked Martin to share his vision of continuous learning, a concept that is becoming a more and more popular nowadays.
“I see continuous learning and development as a keystone of the organization’s growth and success. Today, talented people are getting more and more difficult to acquire and to keep. And in these conditions, the concept of continuous learning not only brings new competences to your organization, but also ensures your talents receive the necessary attention and keep contributing to your organization’s excellence,” Martin says.
Interested to learn more about it? Watch our podcast with Martin!
“The visibility Wrike provided us on projects and resources has dramatically changed our way of working. But what I love most about this tool is its flexibility. I have implemented Wrike 3 times in 3 different organizations, and every time I was able to fit my process by using folders,” says Martin Schwall, Business Development Manager at Aduro Pty Ltd.
