8 Practices Leading to Success with Connected Workspace Apps8 Practices Leading to Success with Connected Workspace Apps
A look at characteristics of the success group from Metrigy’s recent research on connected workspaces for collaborative work management.
September 30, 2024
Neither the idea of, nor need for, a connected workspace capable of supporting collaborative work is new. In fact, many of the companies Metrigy studied in its “Connected Workspace & Collaborative Work Management: 2024-25” have had one or more of these applications in use since 2020 or earlier.
Adoption of connected workspace apps, which enable organizations to create a single location from which employees can accomplish, communicate about/collaborate on, automate, and manage their work, grew with hybrid work. For one, they’re easy to obtain: available via the cloud, often in a freemium model that encourages use among individuals and small teams. For another, they ease the ability for disparately located team members to work in tandem with one another.
Metrigy’s Connected Workspace study, conducted in June 2024, with IT and business stakeholders at 157 companies headquartered in North America, shows 58% using these tools today, with the remainder either planning their implementations (28.6%) or conducting evaluations (13.4%). As they consider the effectiveness of their implementations, companies often use productivity improvements and active usage of licensed usage as metrics under review. Nearly 69% of all companies measure departmental productivity improvements, such as time to completion for a project or task, time saved by automating workflows, or output related to better resource management. And just shy of 73% assess daily, weekly, or monthly active usage, with at least 68.5% of users working via these apps on a regular basis.
Metrigy gathered statistics from those measuring productivity and active usage, then determined a success group out of those reporting at- or above-average improvements in them. For example, the success group improved departmental productivity by 21%, compared to 14.2%, on average, for all companies. Additionally, the success group reported weekly active usage for licensed users of 84.8%, compared to 68.5%, on average, for all other companies.
Running correlations reveals the different behaviors and practices shown by the most successful companies vs. others. Here are eight characteristics of Metrigy’s Connected Workspace success group.
For 76.7% of the success group, first use of a connected workspace app began in 2020 or earlier. This compares to only 65.6% of the non-success group.
Among companies in this study, 57.9% have more than one connected workspace app in use. This situation can lead to organizational silos that make working across teams difficult, bogging down productivity, among other problems. For this and other reasons, including cost rationalization, standardizing on a single app is very much of the minds of IT and business stakeholders. Forty percent of the success group already has standardized, vs. 31% of the non-success group.
As mentioned above, one of the appealing aspects of a connected workspace app is the ability to begin using at team or departmental level—and initial adoption for 53% of companies has been among a single or multiple teams or departments. However, companywide adoption correlates with success: 46.7% of the success group began with a companywide implementation, vs. 34.4% of the non-success group. Likewise, 83.3% of the success group has a companywide implementation today, vs. 62.7% of the non-success group.
Enabling access to a knowledge hub is core capability of many connected workspace apps. A step further is establishing that knowledge hub as a centralized repository for storage of and access to organizational data, aggregated across departments and systems, for all business decision making. There’s a slight success correlation: Sixty percent of the success group has established a single source of truth of organizational data, accessible via the connected workspace, vs. 54.7% of the non-success group.
Many connected workspace apps have a heritage in task or project management, making project work a core use. Having a project management office (PMO) that defines project management best practices and standards correlates to success: 64.7% of the success group has a PMO vs. 50% of the non-success group.
Most connected workspace vendors are quickly building AI features and functionality into their products, and businesses are receptive—61.6% of all companies are already supporting or plan to support AI within connected workspaces. The success group is slightly ahead of the non-success group with their use and plans: 46.6% vs. 42.6%.
Because connected workspaces can be brought into a company by a team or department, spending on these tools is sometimes ad hoc, whether entirely so or in combination with a dedicated budget. However, having a dedicated budget does lead to greater success. In this study, 60% of the success group has a dedicated budget for connected workspaces, vs. 53% of the non-success group.
Implementing a connected workspace app along with a change management plan is a good practice. Half of the success group has done so, vs. 42.5% of the non-success group.
Companies looking to implement or expand their use of a connected workspace app should bear in mind the above-noted characteristics this study’s success group. These are the mark of a mature understanding of how to most benefit from these tools.
About Metrigy: Metrigy is an innovative research and advisory firm focusing on the rapidly changing areas of workplace collaboration, digital workplace, digital transformation, customer experience and employee experience—along with several related technologies. Metrigy delivers strategic guidance and informative content, backed by primary research metrics and analysis, for technology providers and enterprise organizations
