The digital transformation is changing the way businesspeople get work done. Three-fourths of respondents in a Forrester Research Inc. survey said projects in their organizations are more widely distributed than before, with more employees expected to contribute. The influx of input basically benefits outcomes but can be difficult to manage without effective collaboration tools.

“Everybody in an organization is now a project manager whether they recognize it or not,” said Margo Visitacion (pictured), vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.

Visitacion spoke with Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara) and Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Smartsheet Engage event in Bellevue, Washington. They discussed the findings in Forrester’s report on collaborative work management. (* Disclosure below.)

Real-time collab makes big productivity gains

Unplanned tasks require adaptable tools that provide visibility into who is doing what, when and how. Right now, it takes an almost absurd number of applications to get a job done.

“We see the average knowledge worker opening between eight and 13 apps a day to get their job done, and they spend a third to half of their time in email just looking for information,” Visitacion said.

It’s unrealistic to think we will ever get to a one-stop shop, she added, but organizations can build an “operational system of record” that “gives collaboration purpose.” At the center of this are collaborative work-management tools.

Companies surveyed during Forrester’s research said that transparent, easily accessible tools cut down the time they spent chasing down input and data from employees, “seeing this as a sort of a secret sauce to say, ‘Okay, now I can get in better data. We don’t have people rushing to fill in a timesheet on Friday. We’re getting data real-time,'” Visitacion stated.

More than 70 percent of information workers said that collaborative work-management tools were the most-effective tools for leveraging collaboration to deliver successful outcomes. Their long-term implementation could lead to three to four times more gains in both productivity and customer satisfaction, Visitacion concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Smartsheet Engage event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Smartsheet Engage. Neither Smartsheet Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE