A Chat with Sarfraz Ali, VP and Head of EMEA Commercial Sales at Workflow Efficiency Platform: Smartsheet

Smartsheet helps people manage their work, projects, programs, and collaborate with their colleagues more effectively, allowing everyone to achieve their highest potential. Regardless of industry or scale, Smartsheet is a platform that streamlines all your work into one place, allowing you to manage everything from one place.

We also empower teams to automate workflows and design solutions that work based on their needs through an intuitive, no-code platform. In fact, Smartsheet is the only platform that can scale from an individual project through to end-to-end work management with dynamic, tailorable solutions.

For example, Sonnedix, a renewable energy producer specialising in solar plants, used Smartsheet’s no-code technology to create an entire system to support the logistics of office working after the COVID-19 pandemic. What initially started as a simple sheet for colleagues to book in-office days evolved into a convenient QR code capability, allowing colleagues to ‘log in’ to the office by quickly scanning the code with their mobiles – and was complemented with dashboards, including travel widgets with live guidelines about the safest time to commute.

By utilising no code technology, Sonnedix staff across various locations were able to visit the office with confidence, while Sonnedix used its Smartsheet records to track any potential virus exposure to prevent further spread– all created, scaled, and managed with zero code.
 
 

 

What do you think makes this company unique?

 
What sets Smartsheet apart is our complete customizability. Regardless of what you’re trying to accomplish, our platform can provide a tailor-made solution for you. Not everyone in an organisation is a tech genius, and they shouldn’t have to be. Our work management tools provide a flexible, easy to use and secure platform for today’s workforce. That’s the mindset that leads our mission “to empower anyone to drive meaningful change.” Even employees who lack technical know-how or confidence can use Smartsheet to innovate in ways that add value to the business.

While present-day projects may be complex, project management tools don’t have to be. We’ve had thousands of examples of teams creating meaningful change in their businesses with our platform ranging from start-ups to global mega corps, and that’s how we choose to empower them.
 

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

 
Over the course of the past decade, Smartsheet has grown and expanded at a steady but brisk pace. We’ve pushed the boundaries and evolved from being a platform that just runs projects and processes to a dynamic workspace fit for everyone to build their customisable solutions.

We’re constantly looking at how people using Smartsheet can get the most out of our platform, making updates to better serve their needs. For example, we recently launched Portfolio WorkApps, a solution that allows users to build easy-to-navigate apps in a few minutes, all without writing a single line of code.

We’re also strengthening our digital asset management offerings with our 2020 acquisition of Brandfolder, allowing our customers to go from ideation to delivery and finally, performance. Marketing and creative work can be streamlined with Smartsheet’s platform through asset discovery and delivery, while also optimising value through unified team and asset performance analytics.

With Brandfolder, marketers spend 38% less time searching for the assets they need, 50% less time managing assets and 40% less time fielding repetitive requests for assets that already exist. Digital asset management should be a part of every work management stack.

The work we did to provide our diverse user base with the flexibility to create what they need on our platforms is why we’ve carved out a leadership position in the Collaborative Work Management (CWM) sector.
 

What can we hope to see from Smartsheet in the future?

 
Looking ahead, we’re focused on continuing to innovate, shaping the future of the CWM category, and enabling our customers to achieve more. The biggest drivers for our product roadmap are Smartsheet customers– we love their feedback and will continue to prioritise and optimise the platform to serve them best, including continuing to make enhancements to our platform that enable workers in today’s hybrid environment.

We realise that technology is one of many pillars in our customer’s strategy to drive transformation and change in their organisations. We have heard from our EMEA customers that they want to partner with us to simplify their technology stack and drive change management strategies. In the future, you can expect to see more from the Smartsheet EMEA team around this space.