Wrike’s New Enterprise Version for Project Management
by Bill Ives
I wrote about Wrike on the Fast Forward blog a while back, Wrike: Online Project Management for the Rest of Us. Now they are releasing the Wrike Enterprise version tomorrow. The Enterprise version will include task dependences as they move top provide a more comprehensive product. This new feature allows you to calculate the projected final date for a project completion and helps you build the schedule. It also facilitates rescheduling. Wrike now automatically links tasks so that a rescheduling of a top task cascades down to its dependent tasks, immediately displaying the downstream effects on the entire project. Here is a screen shot of a task list
Ease of use is a major goal and they also offer an Intelligent Email Engine™. It works with your emails to turn them into on-line project plans. This feature creates tasks and builds timelines from your emails, and it reminds your team members about tasks. This is an increasing trend as many enterprise 2.0 tool providers are recognizing the need to email integration to allow people to slowing transition to the new tools.
They also now integrate with Microsoft Project so you can upload existing Microsoft Project files to Wrike. They are then converted into a Dynamic Timeline™ that you can work on together with your team. This timeline will reflect all the dates and dependencies. Like, email integration, they are trying to make the transition easy. I think these are all good moves. Here is a screen shot of a timeline.
Their site also offers a list of enterprise 2.0 success stories. I am starting to collect some for 2008, as I did for 2007. I liked the Cook Storage example. It is nice to see when low-tech companies employ and profit from enterprise 2.0 solutions. They keep track of tasks in many areas from finance to facility maintenance and use the email integration feature. The ease of use seems to have help flatten the organization as more people can get involved with project issues.
