How the Monterey Bay Aquarium Enhanced Collaboration While Doubling Their Education Programs

As programs grew and communication became more difficult, the team at the Monterey Bay Aquarium found the right collaboration tool that allows them to communicate easily and abandon their Excel spreadsheet madness. They were able to keep using the processes that worked while tightening up the ones that caused confusion and delays. Instead of going back and forth in meetings about unclear expectations, they can document priorities and expectations in Wrike from the start of every project, and team members can easily refer back if needed. "Basically what our meetings involve is reporting our data and what we've discovered, then going out and doing a lot of our own work, then coming back with more research," says Scott. "The clarity of knowing what the expectation is and then coming back is integral in terms of moving forward at a steady pace."

Wrike has also allowed the team to take their focus off of tedious, administrative tasks that take up so much time and devote more time to running their initiatives. Instead of manually editing dates in Excel spreadsheets when plans change, it's all automatically updated in Wrike. "When we create a dependency for each task within Wrike, we can change its deadline, and it automatically reschedules everything else that's dependent on that task. That's been a huge help," says Dean.

When staff members leave or go on vacation, time is no longer wasted on playing catch-up or looking for missing tasks. All tasks are archived in Wrike so they can easily see what everyone has on their plate at all times. "We had someone leave who had been using Wrike, so we were able to just go into their task list and reassign everything that was assigned to her and it was done," says Scott. "What used to take 4 hours, now takes 30 seconds." The ability to see where others are overloaded or struggling to complete their tasks has allowed the entire team to become more efficient and more collaborative. With the programs doubling in size and the number of projects growing, adopting a tool to provide visibility and easy access to all ongoing projects gives team members the opportunity to jump in and help each other out. "Everybody in our department is a perfectionist," says Scott. "So having the ability to say 'Hey, I see you've got a lot on your plate. I have some time, so let me help you,' has helped not only reduce stress but helps us do our jobs better."