Wrike Has Completely Changed the Way We Work as a Team
Updated September 15, 2023
Wrike Has Completely Changed the Way We Work as a Team
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Wrike
I use Wrike for project managing the production of design deliverables, web pages, print materials, and other deliverables for our marketing team. The blueprints, Gantt charts, automation, and forms make this platform indispensable, especially since we juggle numerous projects simultaneously. I've built numerous forms to address the flow of incoming requests from other departments, all of which create tasks or projects instantly—sending notifications to assignees automatically. This feature alone has helped our team become more nimble as requests become visible in Wrike instead of direct emails and Slack DMs. In addition, I create road maps for recurring projects quickly using Wrike's customizable blueprints, and assignees are automatically notified of new tasks and timelines upon establishment. Our team needed a project management tool that provided full visibility of the workload that was relatively easy to implement and onboard. Our previous solution offered limited visibility for projects, provided little to no capability to see roadmap conflicts, and offered various integrations for existing communication tools (e.g., Slack, Google Suite, etc.). We wanted something that provided customized project templates, offered ease in project management, and easily organized related assets/files.
- Wrike's options to set dependencies keep projects moving automatically without occupying the project manager's time to update each assignee that a task is ready to move forward.
- Every member of the team has full visibility into every project in the space, allowing us to be a highly efficient, nimble team.
- Tagging options make projects easy to find within the workspace, and we've found this helpful when assigning projects to our AGILE sprints.
- Gantt charts quickly identify workload overload, and it helps our team to balance workloads effectively.
- Dashboards are fully customizable for both reports and team management, which we use during our sprint planning sessions.
- Blueprints make duplicating repeated project roadmaps lightening fast, saving time in building road maps for our project managers.
- Building dashboards can be a little tricky, but Wrike's customer service is quick to respond and quite helpful.
- The onboarding videos have been so helpful to our team—I would like a deeper dive into using Dashboards and Reports added to these resources for our team to reference.
- Teams must come to a consensus about which notification settings are a must for ease of communication. We found that if someone only has daily reports turned on and at-mentions silenced, notifications are not as effective.
- There is not currently a way to add images or embedded links in forms. This would be helpful for us as we develop forms for design requests so that recipients can select from different options with a visual.
- When developing forms, there is only an option to include one tag with the ticket/task/project that results. We use multiple tags to keep projects visible in different team folders, so having that option would be quite helpful in saving us the time of tagging requests manually.
- Gantt charts provide dependency options to automatically alert the assignee of a pending task once the previous task is complete
- Project and task tags for easy organization and reference
- Workspace fully accessible and visible by the whole team
- Forms provide an easy way for us to automate requests from other departments
- Wrike's iOS app has made the platform accessible while I travel
- Our team has increased our efficiency overall using Wrike's automation tools
- As a team, we have significantly reduced time spent in back-and-forth communication through Slack DMs and direct email—now, our project communication is in one place, fully visible to each member of the team
- Project managers have reduced time spent on installing and managing projects by more than 30%
- Our team is more nimble with the increased visibility. Tasks can be reassigned quickly, and assignees can easily get caught up to speed through the comments documented in each task
- Basecamp and Smartsheet
We continue to use these products throughout our company; however, Smartsheet required a significant amount of time for onboarding and training a champion user, and Basecamp didn't provide the visibility or functionality that Wrike offered. We used Basecamp as a team for a significant amount of time (Basecamp 1, Basecamp 2, and Basecamp 3) before recognizing that our team needed some additional features in order to best support our project managers.
Do you think Wrike delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Wrike's feature set?
Yes
Did Wrike live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Wrike go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Wrike again?
Yes
Wrike Feature Ratings
Using Wrike
12 - Our Marketing team exclusively uses Wrike as a project management tool at our company. The tool helps us to manage timelines and tasks for email campaigns, print and digital design materials, advertisements, and landing pages, as well as serves as a ticketing system for incoming requests from other departments. Wrike has helped our team stay nimble and maintain our productivity while our team works within a hybrid model.
1 - Before we started Wrike, we did not have a designated project manager to help us balance the workload and track timelines. Wrike created the opportunity for a designated project manager—the tool does require the time necessary to build projects, communicate project progress, and leverage all the features that this platform has to offer. Our team has a lot of projects at once, so this role requires someone who is organized, communicative, and detail-oriented.
- Project management
- Workload distribution
- Event management
- Design management
- Team communication
- Internal ticking system for marketing requests
- Cross-departmental communication
- Customized dashboards
- Email deployment calendar (viewable across departments)
- Blueprints for project development
- Build custom reports for event planning progress
- Share dashboards for social media management
- Track hours to better estimate future project timelines
- Utilize financial fields for budget reports
- Review design items with Wrike's built-in markup tools
Evaluating Wrike and Competitors
Yes - Wrike has replaced Basecamp for our team. With Basecamp, it was challenging to gain visibility to projects that other team members didn't share directly. Plus, there wasn't an easy way to see how the workload was distributed across our team nor tools for automating tasks. Wrike provides us with the visibility and automation for our team to move quickly.
- Ease of Use
Wrike's onboarding is unmatched. The excellent, at-your-own-pace learning tracks helped to get our team up to speed quickly (plus, their team is so helpful when we have questions!). The communication framework within Wrike utilizes at-mentions and other common communication methods that our team is already familiar with. So, our team quickly got projects established.
I strongly suggest creating an onboarding committee to set the team up for success during the onboarding process—our team created an onboarding subcommittee to identify how our department will use the team space and our best practices to create, share, and communicate. However, having more departments on board with this platform would increase our cross-departmental efficiency overall. Currently, we have some departments still using Basecamp and others that use Smartsheets.
Wrike Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
We did not purchase premium support for Wrike. Having access to support on weekends or evenings was not of benefit to us, as we encourage our team members to uphold a healthy work/life balance. The web help form and the Help Center chat options serve us quite well. In addition, our account manager helps to direct our questions and provides additional training, if needed.
We were in need of creating a calendar to keep our email deployment dates visible to our customer service teams, who are not Wrike users. Our account manager arranged a meeting with a Wrike Expert to discuss options to set up such a calendar. The Wrike Expert was extremely knowledgable and suggested multiple ways to accomplish our idea. The result is a calendar, synced with our Wrike project milestones, that is viewable by any company employee. It's exactly what we needed!