Abstract, from the company of the same name headquartered in San Francisco, offers a collaboration tool for developers and others, featuring a version controlled master file set and approval workflow.
N/A
monday.com
Score 8.4 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
monday.com Work OS is an open platform designed so that anyone can create the tools they need to run all aspects of their work. It includes ready-made templates or the ability to customize any work solution ranging from sales pipelines to marketing campaigns, CRMs, and project tracking.
monday.com has very clear default views that are easy to follow, simple to update and amend. Automations are really easy to set up, but you need a good idea of what you want to do and the order it needs to be done in. The options available on Automations are improving all the time.
Automation/integrations - Choosing from template automation or creating your own, integrate across platforms.
Dashboards - Different views i.e. kanban, gantt chart, tables, forms.
All info in one place - Add all of the necessary files for each task inside of Monday; don't need to go looking for ages in different folders on our internal system, add comments, and add assignees to each task—very content-rich way of presenting information.
The billing model is awful for small businesses! monday.com makes you feel like they are doing you a favour. You literally pay for seats you don't use. The billing model should be a per seat model!
There are too many addons from monday.com and 3rd party vendors that you have to pay for. The value of those addons is debatable are often rebuildable outside of monday.com in a single use spreadsheet (which pay monthly for an addon that you only need to use once in a while?) or organisations are already using something else in their tech stack for that addon.
Teams involved in content creation, such as marketing or editorial teams, could use monday.com to manage the entire content lifecycle. Boards might track content ideas, assignments, drafts, reviews, approvals, and publication schedules, helping teams collaborate and keep content production on track.
Abstract has a difficult learning curve. If a feature-branch workflow is new to you, then it will take some getting used to. They make a lot of updates to the interface and these feature releases get ahead of their documentation. They rely heavily on an excellent customer support team and are present on various Slack channels to help design professionals with issues.
The templates are great because it gives you a starting point and then you're able to tailor it to the way YOU want it. I use a lot of trial and error in figuring out how to do certain things, but did learn last week that I'm able to reach out to Monday support and set up a call and they help me with what I'm wanting to accomplish.
Everything performs fairly well. Every now and then there are user errors where an employee will not click "ok" on a note they've created and simply exit out (I do wish that something was in place to prevent this, such as a pop "are you finished?")
Abstract by nature is complex and has to respond to whatever changes in Sketch. So there are frequent issues. Support can be slow to respond and are not always helpful, but they are quick to find and patch the bugs. Overall, it's not the best support, but it hasn't been detrimental.
Fast response from a human, when a human is needed. AI bot gives initial response to my question. Often, the bot response is all I needed to proceed. Best feature is the AI Assistant for writing one-line programs in the Formula columns. The AI Assistant is much smarter than me and adds in well-appreciated items for my formulas. Including column checks and Function suggestions
To have someone walk you thru the features and capabilities of Monday.com is priceless. Someone also coming along later in the contract to see if you are maximizing the program to suit your company needs is beyond helpful. The staff that have provided this training are fun, creative and very patient.
We signed up for the accounts. Created the accounts. Ran the trial version and tested it live while we were running multiple projects and found that it was fitting our needs perfectly. When the trial ended and we were asked to purchase the full version, we did. We have found other ways to use it and it's a breeze.
We used an excel spreadsheet to track our month end close process previously which created a lot of issues around only one person being able to be in the checklist at any given time. Additionally, we were unable to have excel notify us when a task we need to have completed was done, but Monday.com has completely changed that for us!
For it to work across multiple departments and sites, I would like to see improvements made with integrations and automation. For this question, I am acknowledging not only the addition of internal triggers/automation, but also an expansion on external ones.
My favourite example? We used it to take a failed start-up, one where the prime investor was considering pulling out - to being a listed business (EURONEXT) within 18 months. That business now has a market cap at around $200m.
Turnaround of a struggling health tech venture that was buried under endless spreadsheets by its investors - from loss-making to £2M EBITDA in two -years.
Offshoring - Through the adoption of Monday as a key workstream management tool (moving off JIRA) we were able to reduce resource costs by over £2m per annum, without any change in efficiency or quality.
