Item: Wrike
Rating: 10
Author: Chenchira Seger

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use this for organization of our community that supports a university of different style teachings both in person and online. Wrike helps us be able to formulate our goals, see milestones, and plan next steps that help us keep in context where we would like to go. It also helped us onboard new community members faster with more effective communication across our different work groups.

Pros and Cons

Facilitate co-creative collaboration
Gant chart helped us see the bigger goals and milestones
Helped facilitate retreat production easier
Helped delegate simple tasks so that we can on board more people into our organization at a quicker pace

Having a user be able to make edits to to do item due dates

Return on Investment

It has been a lot for our organization to sink in, and the onboarding process has taken quite a lot of time in order to get to this place we are at. So admittedly it's a bit costly at first, but we are definitely on board with how much it's saving us now in terms of high level communication on a wider scale
We have produced our first retreat with Wrike, and easily made in profit what it would take to pay Wrike for the year! So It's definitely been a worthwhile investment
The training and helping people in the organization know where things/projects are has been quite the chore

Alternatives Considered

Slack

There wasn't as much functionality with Slack. It allowed for communication but there wasn't accountability with certain tasks and to see things in a gannt chart view. The Gannt chart view really helped put things into perspective with timelines, deadlines, and the other goals of the company. Slack also doesn't have the feature where different cards for different tasks can be shared in multiple places. Things get lost in the feed and I wasn't able to track as easily what was happening.

Key Insights

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?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Wrike go as expected?

Would you buy Wrike again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Slack

Likelihood to Recommend

Wrike is well suited for retreat production and facilitation among big teams that need to coordinate with each other if there are multiple events happening at the same time. I really like the functionality that multiple people can be working on the same project and we can all see what the status of different projects are. It also helps from a management level so that we can communicate with those who haven't been fulfilling their duties, and pull them aside to ask them how they need support.

Implementation Rating

There are a lot of bells and whistles in Wrike, and not all of it is easy or intuitive to understand once it's plopped in your lap. It's easier when there are a few choice people who understand Wrike as a platform and articulate it in such a way where it makes it easy to pass it along to others in the group.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Change Management Lessons

Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - We have a number of people in our organization where they have trouble with technology and the implementation of it. It was a lot easier for there to be "spokespeople" who were well versed and wanting to use Wrike as an organizational tool. We had one or two enthusiastic individuals in these groups strategically, which helped with the insecurity of those not wanting to jump in right away.

Implementation Issues

Getting the users to get on board with it
Getting the trainers to watch the Wrike videos so they knew more about the product
Not enough adventuresome people willing to just experiment and get it wrong

Perfect for meeting the needs of our organization

Overall Satisfaction with Wrike