The excitement and energy continued to build on Day 2 of Collaborate, Wrike’s first user conference. We kicked it off with an illuminating general session, followed by a networking lunch, and then wrapped up with some engaging breakout workshops. Here are some of the highlights:
One Cup at a Time
Patricia DuChene, VP of Sales, and General Manager of EMEA at Wrike, took the stage for a fascinating fireside chat with Jacob Jaber, CEO of Philz Coffee. Jaber shared the story of how he grew Philz Coffee from a single store into a national brand with close to 50 cafes across the country. He talked about his top guiding principles for building a high-performance organization.
Some notable comments:
"When we first started we didn't really have business. We had to earn our customers. Now when you walk into our stores, there is a line of customers. We had to earn that line. Slowly we grew as we stayed focused on delivering a great customer experience," Jaber said. "We're serving people. We're not serving coffee…. We think of ourselves as being in the people business more than in the coffee business."
Jaber also talked about the importance of hiring people who share your company’s values.
“We follow the CCE Framework: character, competence, and experience. At entry level, we’re relying on the character. We’re looking for people who are sharing our disposition for values,” Jaber emphasized. “You've got to start by translating your values into more concrete characteristics. And then translate those characteristics into hiring practices."
Driving Disruptive Transformative Growth
Next up, Charlene Li, bestselling author and Principal Analyst at Altimeter, shared a presentation on the misconceptions of disruption. Her argument: It’s not disruption that leads to breakthrough growth — it’s the other way around. This kind of disruptive growth requires alignment across the entire organization, as well as across the leadership, culture, and work practices.
Some of her tips for driving disruptive, transformative growth:
- “The companies who drive growth and are disruptive do one thing really well. They chase after the fastest moving part of their ecosystem — the customers who are moving the fastest and moving further and further away from them,” Li said. “Focus on the customer of the future and run as hard and fast as possible to chase after them because that’s where the growth is going to be…. The hardest thing for a company is to decide on one future that everyone is going to chase after.”
- “Disruption isn’t about making big leaps. It’s about making small leaps constantly,” she explained.
- Overcoming fear of failure is critical. “Until you make it safe to learn and make it a positive thing, people won’t make big changes,” Li warned. “It's about getting used to taking risk and being comfortable with risk."
Reshaping the Enterprise With AI and Automation
Next, Andrew Filev, CEO of Wrike, took the stage to lead a discussion on artificial intelligence. The panelists shared how they have successfully applied AI and automation to improve operations, services, and products.
The panel featured:
- Indy Guha, VP of Enterprise Marketing at Signifyd
- Amir Ashkenazi, Founder of Uncommon Co.
- Bryan Helmig, CTO and Co-Founder of Zapier
- Shashi Upadhyay, CEO and Co-Founder of Lattice Engines
Panelists, who all work at high-tech startups using or developing AI and automation, spoke passionately about the trends they see.
“Automation is about how to enable humans to do what they’re best at,” said Guha.
"Don’t just follow AI for the buzzword — just think about what you actually need to achieve," said Ashkenazi. “I ask my team members to think about their jobs in two ways. We have our regular jobs that we do every day, and another job no one is talking about — changing our job so we can do it better 6 months from now."
Helmig shared his tips on leveraging automation. “Start with a nugget or a seed of something. Focus on something you use a lot internally (email, IM, spreadsheets) and use it as an opportunity to embrace automation,” he advised.
Upadhyay underscored the power of artificial intelligence. "The big thing AI is helping with is putting all that data together and creating a common understanding of customers and what state of the journey they're in."
Wrike Roadmap: Becoming the Digital Workplace
After attendees were treated to a quick coffee break, generously provided by conference sponsor Philz Coffee, Filev returned to the stage for some exciting announcements from Wrike.
Wrike for Marketers
An updated version of Wrike for Marketers will launch this November. Improved and additional features will include:
- Wrike Proof: The proofing and approval experience within Wrike has been enhanced with an intuitive, clean interface that allows floating comments that are associated with specific markups for an enhanced user experience.
The Guest Review feature enables key stakeholders who don't have Wrike accounts to participate in the proofing process, streamlining the review cycle and greatly reducing the time it takes to move from project intake to final product. - Wrike Publish: Wrike is partnering with leading digital asset management (DAM) providers MediaValet and Bynder to put on-brand, pre-approved assets at your team’s fingertips.
Teams can now publish approved assets to their DAM directly within Wrike tasks. Searching for and previewing DAM files in Wrike saves time and minimizes redundant creative requests. You'll be able to download files from your DAM to Wrike, share them with key stakeholders, and review edits using Wrike’s Proof feature.
Wrike Resources
One of the most frequently requested features from customers is resource management. With Wrike Resource, you can now efficiently plan work, manage workload, and prioritize projects based on availability.
The intuitive Workload View gives managers complete visibility into each person’s workload and capacity. You can drag and drop tasks, and strategically adjust the number of hours allocated for each team member to optimize resource planning and allocation.
Wrike Integrate
Wrike Integrate gives companies the power to quickly and easily automate workflows, and create integrations with more than 400 cloud or on-premise applications. Wrike Integrate will come prepackaged with automated workflows, but can also be customized without requiring developer input.
Wrike Lock
For customers with a significant focus on security, Wrike Lock delivers unparalleled cloud data security by enabling customers to manage their own encryption keys for all of their Wrike data. That provides greater control of and visibility into data access, including the ability to monitor, approve, or reject requests for data.
Advanced Reporting
Filev also announced a new business intelligence connector to Tableau. It will give customers advanced reporting for greater visibility into workflows and a deeper understanding of the impact of their work. Customers can connect activities and effort to business results, and executives can identify trends and opportunities to improve performance and maximize return on investment.
Breakouts and Beyond
Attendees wrapped up the conference with a series of breakout sessions:
Marketing and Creatives Track
Forming a Global Force of High-Impact Creatives
MediaValet explained how they harnessed Wrike to handle an increasing number of creative assets, despite decreasing production timelines and budgets.
Going Lean to Scale Production
Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California shared how they achieved unprecedented results by adopting lean methodology, and relying on Wrike to manage a flood of marketing requests and a large volume of projects.
Project Managers Track
How to Start Your Project off on the Right Foot
LinkedIn shared how they used Wrike’s request forms and prebuilt Project templates to start their projects off strong and never miss a beat.
Tools and Techniques for Building Collaborative Teams
Jeff Meacham from GiANT Worldwide explained how they employed practical communication tools to help every employee be heard, and create a positive work environment for everyone.
Using Wrike to Deliver Results at Scale
Speakers from Philz Coffee broke down how to achieve dynamic, measurable results with Wrike.
Wrike Tips Track
Resource Management
Wrikers discussed the importance of fundamental resource management and gave a sneak peek into the recently announced Wrike Resource.
A Deep Dive Into Wrike Dashboards and Reporting
We provided an in-depth look at best practices for getting the most out of Wrike’s dashboards and reports features, so you can create a customized work environment.
Live Q&A
To close out the conference, we invited attendees to ask Wrike experts any last-minute burning questions, so we could send them off with valuable, personalized solutions.
See highlights from Day 1 of this year’s Collaborate conference, and stay tuned to see what we have in store for next year!
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