The future of work depends on cross-functional collaboration. Why? The boundaries of teams and roles are shifting faster than ever in response to technological change.
Salespeople run webinars and create collateral to drive leads. Marketers report bugs and flag customer issues found on social media or in communities. Developers conduct customer research and interviews. Work that used to be siloed within specific teams can now involve every department in your organization.
This cross-functional way of operating is fantastic for generating new ideas, boosting employee engagement, and increasing velocity and growth. But it can also create challenges — especially when it comes to aligning on priorities and maintaining quality across tools.
In these situations, Wrike’s apps and integrations enable teams to collaborate and work where they’re comfortable while avoiding information silos.
Here are the eight best Wrike apps and integrations for cross-functional collaboration.
Unito for cross-tool workflows
Many teams use tools that are purpose-made for specialized roles. Software development teams use code repositories like GitHub or GitLab. Sales teams use a CRM like Salesforce or HubSpot. Support teams, meanwhile, use a ticketing tool like Zendesk.
As you collaborate with other teams, you’ll likely want Wrike to be your home base rather than forcing anyone to adopt one of these specialized tools. That’s where Unito comes in.
Unito is a no-code workflow management solution that can connect your apps and automate your workflows in minutes. Bidirectional flows sync tasks and data from those secondary tools into shared Wrike projects in real-time. You can cut through the noise and make sure your collaborators have the right information when and where they need it.
Unito integrates Wrike with all the specialized tools mentioned above, as well as a growing list of 15+ industry-leading software tools.
Microsoft Teams and Slack for team chat
While already a staple for tech-forward companies, business chat apps saw an explosion in usage during the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizations needed a simple way to replace office conversations without resorting to constant meetings, and chat tools filled that void.
Two in particular stand out from the pack: Microsoft Teams and Slack.
Slack users collectively spend over a billion minutes per day in the app, while Microsoft Teams hit 145 million daily active users in April 2021 — remarkable stats that truly illustrate how pervasive these apps have become.
How do these apps enable cross-functional collaboration? They allow members of different departments and teams to communicate in real-time, regardless of location. Both apps also offer public channels that increase transparency as you share information with teams, stakeholders, or other collaborators.
These conversations are unstructured, however, and can’t independently form the basis of collaborative work. Chats might spawn new tasks, projects, or objectives, but they’re not the right channel for organizing and managing them.
That’s why Wrike has integrations with both Microsoft Teams and Slack. With these apps, Wrike users can:
- Work in Wrike without leaving their chat tool
- Create new tasks from within chat conversations or channels
- Receive real-time updates on tasks and projects within the chat apps
Communication is essential to cross-functional collaboration. These two Wrike integrations ensure that conversations and shared tasks are closely linked, so no information gets lost in the shuffle.
Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, and Microsoft OneDrive for file sharing
You’re working on a document and want to get a subject matter expert on another team to review it. So, you save the file to your desktop and email it. They download it, add their thoughts, save it again, attach it to another email, then send it back over to you. You address that feedback and want them to give it another once over, and the entire process repeats itself.
Does this sound familiar?
Not only is this game of hot potato time-consuming, but it creates a long string of dependencies that kill velocity and make collaboration a blocker rather than an enabler. There is a much better way to exchange files and manage feedback cycles: cloud file storage systems.
Wrike offers integrations with the four biggest file storage apps in the world:
These tools allow multiple people to upload, access, and share files in just a few clicks. Files are stored in the same location, so you don’t have to send them back and forth between collaborators. Even better, Google Drive and Box offer simultaneous editing — meaning multiple people can work in the same file at the same time. Instead of waiting on someone to play their part, everyone can collaborate in tandem, speeding up the entire process.
By integrating these cloud storage tools, Wrike naturally incorporates files and feedback in your project workflows. Files can easily be attached and shared within tasks, so documents, sheets, images, and more are always on hand.
Tableau for sharing data and insights
Do you want to improve collaboration across teams, departments, and your entire organization? Dive into the data.
Wrike provides a number of native reports that enable you to see what's blocking the team, what's overdue, how tasks are progressing, and more. These are a great resource for determining how projects are going and identifying places to improve.
But if you’re data-driven and want to really optimize cross-functional collaboration, you should consider Wrike’s Tableau integration.
Tableau is a powerful analytics platform that can uncover insights and package data into digestible visuals. This integration automatically pulls in Wrike data, synthesizes it, and runs advanced reports that go beyond Wrike’s native analytics. You can analyze how different teams are working together, find opportunities for improvement, and share learnings and successes throughout your organization.
Collaboration? There’s an app for that
Software tools are supposed to promote cross-functional collaboration. But when each team has its own suite of tools, you may find yourself struggling to track work and communicate. Wrike’s apps and integrations help you and your collaborators get on the same page by centralizing information and keeping everyone aligned, no matter where they work. Want to see it in action? Start a free two-week trial today.
