Report:
Magic Quadrant for Collaborative Work Management
How does Gartner define the Collaborative Work Management market in 2023?
Gartner defines the collaborative work management market as products that provide task-driven workspaces to enable end users to plan, coordinate and automate their work. These solutions provide user-friendly capabilities for work planning, in-context collaboration, content creation, workflow and automation, reporting, analytics and dashboards, as well as use-case accelerators on a platform that handles data management and administrative operations. Products in this market are defined by their purpose (work planning and execution), their target users and their broad functionality.
Key Facts for Magic Quadrant for Collaborative Work Management in 2023
- Publication Date: 11 December 2023
- Document ID: G00781433
- Coverage: Global
- Authors: Nikos Drakos, Joe Mariano, and 1 more
- Core Purpose: To help application leaders understand the fast-growing CWM market and make informed choices about collaborative work management tools that enable business users to plan, coordinate, manage and automate common repeatable work activities relevant to their business needs.
Strategic Planning Assumptions
No strategic planning assumptions provided.
How was the Collaborative Work Management market evolved in 2023?
- CWM tools provide task-driven workspaces for end users to plan, coordinate and automate their work
- Products offer capabilities for work planning, in-context collaboration, content creation, workflow and automation, reporting, analytics and dashboards
- The market is evolving rapidly, driven by remote/hybrid work, rising customer demand for various work use cases, and interest from vendors in adjacent markets
- Several vendors are gaining market share with freemium products targeting business users and small teams directly
- CWM deployments tend to be opportunistic, leading to proliferation of uncoordinated efforts with multiple tools
- Common obstacles include lack of governance experience at scale, culture attitudes, skills readiness, and vendor/product risk
- The market includes 10 vendors evaluated across Leaders, Challengers, and Niche Players quadrants
- Leaders include Smartsheet, monday.com, Asana, Wrike, and Airtable
- Challengers include Adobe and Atlassian
- Niche Players include ClickUp, Notion, and Quickbase
- Vendors are introducing generative AI capabilities for plan health checks, status updates, attention management, goal setting, and collaboration support
What product features are required to be included in this year's evaluation?
- Work planning for breaking work activities into tasks, establishing dependencies and specifying timelines, resources or budgets.
- In-context collaboration that provides team spaces where participants can discuss and share documentation that is relevant to a business activity, update a plan based on new information and send or receive notifications in the context of specific activities.
What are the common features of top products in the Collaborative Work Management space?
- Workflow and automation functionality to automate repetitive activities through workflows or rules that trigger actions automatically based on events and execution activity. Actions may include notifications, approval requests, data pulls from external sources and general data manipulation.
- Reporting, analytics and dashboards that provide comprehensive search and analytics capabilities, including dynamic, customizable, operational and management reports and dashboards — both for team members and different levels of management. These include reports on the overall plans, the status of execution, dependencies, bottlenecks, timelines and other aspects of the work activity.
- Content collaboration for composing new content as well as to share, edit, view and collaborate around existing content; content version control and audit trails.
- Platform and operations support that aggregates system data including behavior and other metadata into a single database that users can query, explore or filter; administrative controls to manage users, data and work plans; and integration with other workplace and business applications.
- Use-case accelerators and prebuilt templates for specific work scenarios, such as work planning and execution: intake, triage and service operations; marketing work management; case management operations; team objectives and key results management, product management operations; and professional services automation.
Scope Exclusions
- Products requiring purchase of separate non-CWM software platform
- Vendors without 4 years of product general availability
- Vendors not meeting minimum revenue or employee thresholds
- Vendors without substantial multi-region market presence
- Products lacking integrated work planning and in-context collaboration capabilities
Inclusion Criteria
Vendors must, among other requirements:
- Active participation in the CWM market as a pure-play provider
- Product must not require separate non-CWM platform purchase
- At least 4 years of product general availability
- At least $50 million in revenue OR 300+ full-time employees dedicated to CWM
- At least 300 new paying customers OR 30,000 new paying end-user subscriptions in 2022
- At least 100 customers with annual contract value exceeding $100,000 OR 100 customers with 1,000+ users
- Substantial market presence in North America, Europe, and Asia/Pacific
- Top 20 ranking in Customer Interest Indicator composite score
Ability to Execute — Relative Weighting
- Product or Service - High
- Overall Viability - Medium
- Sales Execution/Pricing - Low
- Market Responsiveness/Record - NotRated
- Marketing Execution - Low
- Customer Experience - High
- Operations - NotRated
Completeness of Vision — Relative Weighting
- Market Understanding - Low
- Marketing Strategy - Low
- Sales Strategy - Low
- Offering (Product) Strategy - High
- Business Model - NotRated
- Vertical/Industry Strategy - NotRated
- Innovation - Medium
- Geographic Strategy - Low
FAQs
Q: What does this research cover?
A: This research covers the collaborative work management (CWM) market, evaluating 10 major vendors based on their ability to execute and completeness of vision. It provides market definition, vendor strengths and cautions, quadrant positioning, inclusion/exclusion criteria, evaluation criteria, and market overview including trends, obstacles, and the impact of generative AI on CWM.
Q: Who should use this research?
A: Application leaders and digital workplace leaders should use this research to understand the CWM market landscape, evaluate vendor capabilities, and identify suitable collaborative work management tools for their organization's needs. It should be used in combination with the Critical Capabilities for Collaborative Work Management report and Gartner's client inquiry service for vendor selection, not in isolation.
Q: What are the mandatory features of vendors included in this market?
A: The mandatory features for products in the CWM market are: (1) Work planning - for breaking work activities into tasks, establishing dependencies and specifying timelines, resources or budgets, and (2) In-context collaboration - that provides team spaces where participants can discuss and share documentation relevant to business activities, update plans based on new information, and send or receive notifications in the context of specific activities.
Q: What are some reasons for not being included in this report?
A:
- Product requires purchase of separate non-CWM platform to obtain CWM functionality
- Less than 4 years of product general availability and active marketing to business users
- Insufficient revenue (less than $50 million) and insufficient dedicated employees (less than 300 full-time employees)
- Insufficient new customer acquisition (less than 300 new paying customers or 30,000 new paying end-user subscriptions in 2022)
- Insufficient large customer base (less than 100 customers with $100,000+ annual contract value or 1,000+ users)
- Lack of substantial market presence across North America, Europe, and Asia/Pacific regions
- Ranking outside top 20 in Gartner's Customer Interest Indicator composite score
- Missing mandatory capabilities of work planning and in-context collaboration
Q: What differentiates Ability to Execute vs. Completeness of Vision?
A: Ability to Execute focuses on quality and efficacy of processes, systems, and methods that enable competitive performance, emphasizing product/service delivery and customer experience. It judges vendors on their ability and success in realizing their vision. Completeness of Vision evaluates vendors on their ability to articulate market direction, innovation, customer needs, and competitive positioning - essentially their understanding of how market forces can be exploited to create opportunities. Ability to Execute is about current performance and delivery, while Completeness of Vision is about strategic direction and future potential.
Reference
- Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Collaborative Work Management, 11 December 2023, ID G00781433
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