Analyst(s): Keith Kirkpatrick
Publication Date: October 9, 2024
At its annual ENGAGE user conference in Seattle, Smartsheet unveiled a series of enhancements aimed at improving project visibility and data interaction within its work management platform. The company’s focus on improving productivity and efficiency is further underscored by the introduction of new AI tools for Enterprise plan customers. Moreover, Smartsheet is shifting its pricing model to allow customers greater access to various features without the need for distinct licenses.
What is Covered in this Article:
- Smartsheet’s new features and functional updates to its platform.
- The introduction of the availability of generative AI features, as well as the announcement of the Amazon Q data-access tool.
- Smartsheet’s continuing shift to a freemium-esque pricing model designed to illustrate value to the customer.
- Insights into Smartsheet’s strategy of building additional integrations to other applications and data sources.
The News: Work management platform provider Smartsheet kicked off its annual ENGAGE user conference with a flurry of new product enhancements that are touted as helping users and managers gain more visibility and control over projects, while also enabling them to interact and activate data held within their organization via generative AI, as well as a partnership with Amazon Q.
The new features are designed to make it easier for workers and managers to view, understand, and discover insights from data held within the platform itself, as well as other systems and applications that are integral to the project management process. The company also announced the inclusion of a novel pricing model for AI functionality that will be available through the end of the calendar year, as well as a new platform structure that is based on a freemium pricing approach.
Will Smartsheet’s New Enhancements Drive Efficiency and Better Work Management?
Analyst Take: Smartsheet announced several new enhancements to its work management platform at ENGAGE, its annual user conference held in Seattle in early October. The new features and functional enhancements are designed to help workers and managers gain more visibility into projects, the data that is used to complete and manage these projects, and remove the friction involved in interacting with and extracting insights from their data.
Ben Canning, SVP of Product Experiences with Smartsheet, detailed the major enhancements to the platform during the ENGAGE keynote address.
- Workload Heatmap and Workload Schedule: Customers on Business and Enterprise plans now have access to these two new workload tracking features that are designed to help managers better understand project resource utilization, allocation, and scheduling, across the entire project portfolio or organization. According to Smartsheet, since launching earlier this year, these features have been used on over 35,000 projects across organizations of all sizes and industries.
- Resource Management: This new feature will be available soon to customers on Business and Enterprise plans, and will let customers organize their resource data in a Smartsheet report and display these insights on dashboards, improving visibility and decision-making.
- Timeline View: Available now, all Smartsheet customers can use the new Timeline View to give teams a big-picture look into date-based work, with support for organizing data into visual groups by attribute, or surfacing large project milestones, making it easier to see critical dates.
- New AI Tools: Available today, Enterprise plan customers can do the following:
- Analyze data via simple conversational prompts, with the analyze data tool instantly generating metrics or visual charts based on customers’ data in Smartsheet.
- Generate formulas to drive processes and automation in Smartsheet.
- Create text and summarize, simplifying customers’ work by interpreting their data and objectives, then crafting summaries, translations, or new ad copy.
- According to CEO Mark Mader, these AI tools will be available to all enterprise customers for free through the end of the calendar year.
Driving Productivity and Efficiency Through Streamlined Tools
The announcements of new features and enhancements at Smartsheet ENGAGE build on the company’s strong legacy of providing the tools required to ensure full project visibility and control through a single platform. The platform is truly enterprise-grade, enabling large organizations to manage hundreds or thousands of projects simultaneously, while providing granular visibility into the processes and tasks that are used to complete projects.
The product announcements today underscore Smartsheet’s commitment to improving the way managers and users can access and interact with critical project data, focusing on resource allocation and scheduling, which is often the most challenging component to manage, given the high degree of complexity and variability of labor.
The improvements to the data access and visualization tools are solid, but should be expected in a market where users expect they will be able to access data from wherever it lives, and then easily categorize, file, and use it from within their flow of work. Smartsheet is doing a good job of making this information easily available, and I expect they will continue to push to develop additional integrations with other applications to truly support a full, open-ecosystem approach to work management.
Business Model Shift Reflects Confidence in the Core Capabilities of the Product
Smartsheet has moved many of its customers to a new pricing model, under which users can access and use any number of the various functions and features included on the platform. Under this model, instead of turning on licenses for distinct products, Smartsheet enterprise customers will be able to use the various functions of the platform to establish use cases and demonstrate value internally, and ensure that the right users have access to the functionality they require.
At the end of the term, Smartsheet will adjust the pricing based on this usage, and noted that they will work with customers to come to a reasonable agreement on pricing. This approach is in line with other major SaaS vendors that are increasingly seeking to move away from strict, seat-license-based pricing model in favor of a model that more closely aligns to the value delivered to the customer. My sense is that this approach will further improve customer loyalty and retention, particularly if Smartsheet customers continue to see significant efficiency gains. N.B., I spoke with several customers onsite who mentioned they were seeing 3-4 hours of time saved per week, per employee, which translates into massive labor cost savings and enables workers to focus on more important, higher-value tasks.
The key for Smartsheet’s success ultimately will hinge upon how well it is able to integrate additional generative AI tools and functions. The Amazon Q deal, which enables users to easily access data held within and outside of Smartsheet is a great step in the right direction, as are the currently available AI tools already in the platform. In particular, the formula-creation tool has already received rave reviews, because it addresses an actual need, and can be used to quickly add value across a wide range of users, from novice to expert.
I expect Smartsheet will take heed of the continuing trend to implement powerful generative AI tools within the platform, making it easier for people to not only query data, but also create an audit trail so others can easily verify data and outputs, and then learn how to structure similar queries. Smartsheet’s prudent approach of incorporating generative AI to enable specific business outcomes should serve its customers well, and help ensure it does not lose ground to other competitors.
What to Watch:
- Smartsheet is continuing to experiment with generative AI tools, and continuing to focus on judiciously deploying it into specific use cases and functions where the tech can deliver real value to its users. Smartsheet likely will focus on these high-value, business-outcome-based use cases for generative AI feature investment over the next several months.
- Smartsheet realizes it is not operating in a vacuum, and is working on building out additional integrations and connections to other applications. The company will need to identify not only the large integrations that drive stickiness, but also smaller ones that customers consider to be mission critical.
- Smartsheet is doing a good job of telling its story around data safety, governance, and privacy, and needs to continue to highlight that message to IT leaders, particularly as it builds out additional integrations and connectors to other systems.
- Smartsheet’s pricing model and approach – which in many ways is essentially a freemium model that incorporates some elements of a consumption model – appears to be a solid strategy, as it links price to value delivered. As more organizations migrate to this new platform and model, it will be interesting to see whether this approach continues to make sense for Smartsheet, and whether its new ownership will also see the merits of this approach.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Other insights from The Futurum Group:
Smartsheet’s Q2 Fiscal 2025 Earnings: AI Integration and Enterprise Expansion Drive Growth
Smartsheet Implements Gen AI-Powered Assistant for Its Employees
Enhancing Security and Efficiency with Smartsheet Advance
Author Information
Keith has over 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields.
He has authored in-depth reports and market forecast studies covering artificial intelligence, biometrics, data analytics, robotics, high performance computing, and quantum computing, with a specific focus on the use of these technologies within large enterprise organizations and SMBs. He has also established strong working relationships with the international technology vendor community and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.
In his career as a financial and technology journalist he has written for national and trade publications, including BusinessWeek, CNBC.com, Investment Dealers’ Digest, The Red Herring, The Communications of the ACM, and Mobile Computing & Communications, among others.
He is a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP).
Keith holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Magazine Journalism and Sociology from Syracuse University.