Collaborative Work Management (CWM) platforms are quickly becoming indispensable for modern, hybrid teams. More than just a central hub for project management, these solutions are paving the way for better team alignment, creativity, and enhanced process efficiency. The question is, how do you optimize and improve collaborative work management ROI?
Studies from market leaders like Asana suggest that the right software improves productivity (for 87% of respondents), enhances clarity (for 86% of teams), and reduces operational costs. However, to achieve those outcomes, companies still need the right strategy for choosing the right software, training teams, and enabling continuous improvements.
Here, we’ll show you how to improve the ROI of your collaborative work management platform by boosting its impact on staff alignment, performance, and engagement.
Calculating Collaborative Work Management ROI
So, how exactly do you calculate collaborative work management ROI? There are a lot of factors to consider. For example, Asana says 29% of companies achieve significant cost savings after using a CWM platform for just a few years. But what about the other benefits of CWMs?
A collaborative work management platform can boost productivity, enhance customer satisfaction and retention rates, and even eliminate expenses by automating repetitive tasks.
Just some of the things you should be looking at include:
- Productivity and Efficiency Gains: CWM tools streamline workflows by centralizing tasks, communications, and timelines, reducing the time employees spend searching for information or coordinating work. More productive, efficient employees achieve better results with fewer resources, boosting revenue and cutting operational costs.
- Cost savings: By enhancing efficiency and automating tasks, CWM solutions can reduce the need to pay for additional labor and support. Some tools can even combine multiple digital solutions into a single platform, reducing your spend on different apps. That means more technology budget left over in your pocket.
- Improved customer satisfaction: Better internal collaboration = better service for customers. Alignment between teams, and effective project management can enhance customer satisfaction, increase retention rates, and even strengthen relationships with buyers, turning them into advocates that help grow your business.
- Employee satisfaction: Well-implemented CWM systems can improve employee experiences by enhancing communication and collaboration, reducing silos, and improving transparency. Happier employees are less likely to abandon your business, meaning you save money on recruitment and training.
- Enhanced project throughput: With better resource allocation and streamlined processes, teams can handle more projects without increasing headcount. This scalability allows for greater output and potential revenue growth. Teams can innovate faster and achieve better results, all without extra expenses.
How to Improve Collaborative Work Management ROI
Now you know what kind of things you should look at when calculating collaborative work management ROI, it’s time to look at how you can boost your return on investment. Here are our top tips for making the most of your new platform.
1. Choose Software with a Focus on ROI
First, you’ll need to make sure that you’re choosing the software that’s actually going to contribute to your company’s growth. Don’t just think about the initial cost of whatever you’re investing in. Look at the impact it can have on your team’s productivity, efficiency, and performance.
For instance, spending extra on Asana’s AI-powered collaborative work management tools could help you save money in the long term by allowing you to automate more complex tasks, streamline assignment strategies, and even design your virtual agents.
Try to calculate the collaborative work management ROI of each platform you’re considering in advance, looking at factors like scalability, usability, integration capabilities, and cutting-edge features. Set clear goals that you want to achieve with your CWM system, and identify the metrics you need to monitor to ensure you’re making progress.
2. Invest in Extensive Onboarding and Training Strategies
You can’t achieve the best collaborative work management ROI if your teams aren’t actively using your technology. Effective onboarding and training strategies are crucial for driving adoption and ensuring everyone gets the most value out of your new software.
Build an onboarding strategy that provides team members with valuable resources, documentation, video guides, and insights into the tools they will use. Consider finding “champions” in your team who can test the software during an initial pilot program, deliver feedback to business leaders, and then help train future team members.
Invest in structured but personalized training programs. For instance, you might focus on teaching marketing teams how to use Monday.com to plan campaigns and track results with custom dashboards.
Update your training initiatives regularly as you embrace new features in your toolkit, like AI-powered assistants or no-code workflow builders.
3. Nurture Engagement and Gather Feedback
It’s one thing to encourage your employees to use collaborative work management tools. It’s another thing entirely to foster engagement and ensure that employees really utilize the full potential of the platforms. Don’t just ask employees to use Kanban boards on Trello, or spreadsheets on Smartsheet, show them the benefits of leveraging these tools.
Incentivize usage by recognizing and rewarding team members who actively use cutting-edge features, like automatic workflow builders, to improve processes. Gather feedback from your team members regularly to identify any pain points they might be facing. Ask them for insights into how their experience could be improved.
Look for ways to make using your toolkit more interesting and exciting. For instance, you might experiment with gamification strategies (like leaderboards and point systems), to boost engagement and motivation among hybrid teams.
4. Measure Collaborative Work Management ROI Regularly
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Fortunately, most of the top collaborative work management tools make tracking the results of your new processes and initiatives easy. They include dashboards and customizable reports that can give insights into engagement and usage patterns, productivity, project outcomes, and budget issues.
Establish key performance indicators to monitor based on your goals and track progress. Share those reports and insights with your team members, or allow them to create their own dashboards for real-time monitoring.
Bring your key team members together regularly for meetings where you can collaboratively discuss ways of improving collaborative work management ROI based on your findings.
5. Implementing Advanced Features
Finally, one of the best ways to improve collaborative work management ROI is to take advantage of cutting-edge features and capabilities as they emerge. Experimenting with advanced workflow builders can boost team efficiency and help you save time and money on repetitive tasks.
Integrating your CWM platform with various other tools, such as video conferencing, CRM, ERP, and workforce optimization software, can reduce data silos and improve decision-making processes.
Tapping into artificial intelligence can also be extremely useful. For instance, AI assistants built into CWM platforms can handle things like summarizing content and creating project plans. They can also transcribe, translate, and summarize meetings, leading to better collaboration and communication.
With Asana’s AI Studio, companies can even build autonomous agents that can handle multi-stage processes without human input. That reduces the need for additional employees. Constantly look for new ways to leverage advanced capabilities that resonate with your business goals.
Maximizing Collaborative Work Management ROI
Investing in a collaborative work management platform is just the beginning of your journey towards better, more efficient processes in hybrid work. Once you’ve found the toolkit you need, you should invest in a continuous strategy to boost return on investment.
Invest in training teams, optimizing engagement, measuring results, and implementing advanced features as your needs evolve. Want to learn more about what CWM platforms can do for your business? Discover the top challenges CWM platforms solve here.
Ready to be inspired by the case studies of other companies achieving incredible ROI with CWM solutions? Check out these collaborative work management success stories.
