Smartsheet or dumbsheet?

You know how someone points something out, you go take a look, you get hooked and go on exploring. That happened today.

David Terrar pointed me to a story he wrote about Smartsheet‘s marketing. It has this embedded YouTube video. Smartsheet were at Office 2.0, I didn’t see their presentation but clicked through to their site. This is plain bloody AWESOME.

As David previously noted, task management, even in small teams is a pretty tough ask. Smartsheet solves that problem with an Excel style interface, email alert capability tied to date driven events. What’s more, here’s some of the other things you can do that you simply cannot do with any offline, standalone spreadsheet:

• Folders for organizing information
• Non-users may update Smartsheet.com from e-mail without signing into the application
• Create your own custom fields with specific drop-downs which make sense for your organization
• Set intelligent alerts which will notify you upon changes to important data

(These words were pinched directly from their website – their words are better than mine)

I can see this as a Sarbanes-Oxley (or some other compliance) planning tool. I can see it as a month or quarter end or some other end planning and execution tool. It’s the kind of thing CODA has built with process management and finance automation. Except the pricing is a fraction of what it would cost to licence CODAs solution. But it doesn’t have all CODA’s bells and whistles so I might still be tempted for the other offering. But then maybe not.

The comparison is moot because Smartsheet have taken the spreadsheet metaphor for usability reasons while inventing an innovative way to make project management much, much simpler. OK – there isn’t complex process flow but there’s decent, ‘good enough’ workflow. I now have a ready made answer for those who say the online spreadsheet can’t trump the desktop version on a required features basis. Hmmm. Isn’t the ‘can do’s’ outlined here in any single interface within the Office stable?

Smartsheet might not (yet) be enterprise ready, but I can see massive value for professionals smart enough to understand value when it smacks them in the face. And in the longer term, I can only see Smartsheet going forward – not just in IT shops but in consulting and advisory service environments. That’s just for starters.

Back to the marketing thing. Smartsheet is using a viral approach to its campaign. At the last count, the video had been viewed 560 times. I wonder how many of those followed through? What was the click through rate? I reckon that trumps traditional ad placement or advertorial. Everytime. Because the distribution cost is zero, the return enormous.

And before anyone yells: ‘Expensive ad campaign’ Smartsheet has not raised a lot of money. So unless the founders have lost their marbles, I doubt the 90 second video broke the bank. Traction must be pretty good because pricing has plummeted since August. This is a killer app for the profession.

Technorati Tags: CODA, innovation, marketing communications

Tagged as: Innovation