What is Adobe Workfront?

Adobe Workfront is a work management solution that helps project managers in marketing, IT, and client services organize tasks. Using Workfront, knowledge workers can manage the entire project lifecycle in one place instead of switching between tools.

Workfront was brought under the Adobe umbrella in 2020 after its $1.5 billion acquisition and acts as a centralized hub, allowing teams to coordinate and collaborate more effectively.

Workfront is similar to Jira, Asana, and other project management solutions but provides a work management tool tailored to the Adobe ecosystem.

Understanding Workfront

The Adobe Cloud suite has various products for content management, media editing, content creation, application development, prototyping, and more. Teams of marketers, developers, and adjacent operations personnel often have to organize these multiple tools and ensure campaigns and projects stay on track.

Workfront provides a single solution for managing all those tools in one intuitive place. It can help teams automate workflows and successfully move from the strategy and planning stage to delivery and execution.

Key Capabilities

1. Centralized Work: Workfront allows upper management to set clear priorities, allocate budgets, and foster collaboration across divisions. It’s a hub where teams can streamline workflows and achieve their goals.

2. Strategic Planning: With Workfront, you can strategically plan projects, allocate resources, and ensure alignment with organizational objectives. It’s about making informed decisions and optimizing work processes.

3. Collaboration: Workfront facilitates collaboration by providing a centralized space for teams to communicate, share files, and track progress. Whether you’re working on marketing campaigns, product launches, or creative projects, Workfront keeps everyone on the same page.

Extensions

Workfront also offers add-ons to make that process easier.

• Workfront Fusion: Adobe Workfront Fusion connects systems and applications to Adobe Workfront and ensures data synchronization without requiring customized integrations.

• Workfront Scenario Planner: A responsive planning solution that updates project scenarios based on feedback and recommends the best path forward.

• Workfront Goals: A goal planning solution that connects strategy and planning to work execution and delivery so that teams can measure progress and see how tasks impact business results.

How Internal Teams Can Leverage Adobe Workfront

Each department across the enterprise can leverage and benefit from Workfront in different ways.

Strategic Alignment

Marketing and IT teams can define goals and map requests against these goals for a connected view of how actions and campaigns impact revenue and drive results. Departments can plan and prioritize projects based on available sources and up-to-date data. They can also accelerate workflows and streamline review cycles with automation.

Execution and Results

Teams can launch campaigns and track their progress, allowing them to measure results and see what’s working and what isn’t.

Workfront Benefits

Adobe Workfront offers several benefits for enterprises by providing a single source of truth for everything happening across the business.

Increased Visibility Through Strategic Planning 

Workfront provides clear direction for organizations by making goals visible. Teams can track progress, prioritize tasks, and measure results effectively, ensuring greater alignment with the broader business goals.

Better Resource Management

With Workfront, organizations can gain clarity about their existing resources and team capacity. Teams can analyze potential projects and priorities against the available resources and budget to ensure that the right projects are prioritized and can be completed on time and within budget without compromising quality.

Easier Project Management

With a centralized hub and better visibility into work in progress, Workfront allows teams to manage projects and deliver better work at scale.

For example, imagine a team of developers, marketers, and designers who want to prioritize the creation of a specific page on a new website build. However, since this is a large enterprise website catering to millions of visitors per month, there are 30+ page templates, and it can be challenging to keep track of the status of each one.

There are also multiple interdependencies between the completion of the visual design and the start of development. With Workfront, it is possible to create a plan for the visual design and insert deadlines for each visual deliverable to understand the impact on the project.

Improved Cross-team Collaboration 

Workfront allows teams to collaborate in the applications where work gets done, including AEM and other products in the Adobe Experience Cloud. It streamlines approval workflows and supports multiple collaborative work methodologies, such as Agile, Scrum, Kanban, etc. Workfront allows teams to work in the best way that suits them.

Time and Cost Savings

Using Workfront, teams can quickly identify blockers and dependencies instead of copying from a system like Jira and manually tracking progress while coordinating with other team members and tools. The increased productivity and better resource management lead to more money that can go towards the bottom line.

Adobe Workfront vs. Other Project Management and CMP Tools

Adobe Workfront is the work management solution for the Adobe ecosystem. In terms of features and functionality, it is primarily a project management tool. To help with task management and keep track of deliverables and deadlines, Adobe Workfront can generally be compared to tools like Jira, Trello, and Asana.

However, marketing teams using Adobe Workfront will likely compare it to a content marketing platform, such as Optimizely CMP or Sitecore Content Hub. These platforms help marketing teams streamline their content operations and execute their content strategy. Alongside the main CMS or DXP, a CMP helps teams plan, create, collaborate, and distribute content where it needs to go by centralizing content operations. 

For businesses currently using other Adobe products, such as Adobe Experience Manager, Analytics, and others, Workfront provides a better alternative that can help them increase productivity and results. It also integrates with several tools in the typical enterprise stack, such as Jira, Salesforce, GSuite, and Slack.

Who Should Use Adobe Workfront

1. Businesses already use other products in the Adobe ecosystem, particularly AEM.

2. For companies where most tasks fall outside the digital marketing umbrella, such as facilitating on-site events, organizing an off-site photoshoot, or creating assets that go into direct mail pieces, a CMP will provide a different value than Adobe Workfront.

Who Should Consider Other Products

1. Businesses outside the Adobe ecosystem might benefit from another content marketing or project management platform that closely aligns with their day-to-day needs.

2. For companies with digital marketing-related tasks (assets to be published to websites or other digital channels ), a solution such as Optimizely CMP or Sitecore Content Hub might be a better fit. 

Getting Started with Adobe Workfront

Here are some steps to kick off your journey with Workfront:

1. Explore Tutorials: Visit the Workfront Tutorials section. It offers a library of training videos and articles designed specifically for beginners. Learn about features, settings, and best practices.

2. Resource Management: Understand how to manage resources effectively. Workfront provides visual tools to analyze requests, balance workloads, and assign tasks efficiently.

3. Task Assignment: Dive into task assignment and prioritization. Workfront’s central dashboard lets you launch projects, view available resources, and seamlessly assign tasks.

4. Automation and Integration: Explore automation features. Workfront automates complex processes, links work to outcomes, and ensures easy access to critical information.

Unlocking the Full Potential of Adobe Workfront

Workfront is a robust work and project management solution for enterprises, and anyone using other Adobe products should consider it to provide a single source of truth for all their business-related activities.

Oshyn is a certified Adobe partner and offers services encompassing the entire lifecycle, from design planning to development to post-launch enhancements and maintenance. We can help implement AEM, Analytics, Workfront, and other tools, assisting organizations in reducing the burden on their IT staff and gaining complete visibility of their systems.

Are you wondering if we’re a good fit? Check out our How to Select a Tech Partner Guide for Marketers.