What does it take to entice an Excel addict away from their Microsoft ways? The allure of real-time access... perhaps redefining “efficiency” or taking teamwork to the cutting edge. These are just a few of the reasons that Lee Odess, general manager of the lean, fast-moving startup Brivo Labs left behind archaic offline spreadsheets in favor of Smartsheet and hasn’t looked back. Today? “Smartsheet is a core part of what we do and how we work,” said Odess.
Here, Odess shares his thoughts as a former Excel addict:
Brivo Labs is a startup formed out of Brivo Systems, a company that has specialized in cloud-
based access control and security for the past 15 years. We take Brivo’s core API and leverage it in other areas of “contextual security” if you will – in other words, attaching your social identity from the virtual world to a physical token, like a QR code, on your iPhone, and then using that identity to trigger something in the physical world.
Here’s an example – today, when you make a reservation with OpenTable and you arrive at the restaurant, you still have to check in with the hostess when you arrive. Our products take this experience to the next level. With your phone connected to your OpenTable identity and the bluetooth capability enabled on your phone, when you arrive for your reservation, you’re automatically checked in, no extra work on your part. You can head to the bar, grab a drink, and the restaurant’s system will send you a text when your table is ready.
We work to develop products like this and make our API accessible to others so that they can build their own solutions.
We used to use Excel for everything: project management, product management, communication with our board, you name it.
We were addicted to Excel. We spent our days and nights in Excel.
There are some big challenges that come along with living your life in Excel: files aren’t live and are incredibly silo’d. There are huge obstacles when it comes to version control. It wasn’t just our files that were silo’d, our team was too. We spent way too much time managing documents.
I was introduced to Smartsheet by one of the guys on our team, and at first we used it just as a place to share files more or less, as opposed to a working file in Excel. He put together a sheet and then shared it with the rest of the team. When I first opened up Smartsheet, my initial reaction was just, “WOW.” So was the rest of my team’s.
So why does Smartsheet win out over Excel?
- Files are live With an online spreadsheet, my team is actually able to work together in real time. It also adds transparency and serves as a communication tool since I also use it to share our sheets with our Board, so that they stay updated on our progress whenever they’d like. Now when a Board member emails me with a question, I send them an updated row. When I make significant changes to a sheet, I send them a notification directly from Smartsheet to look at the changes, saving hours of time.
- We’ve gotten rid of revision history headaches We’re a startup – things are going 100 miles an hour for us. Every second we waste trying to find a certain file is a big loss for us. The real-time aspect of Smartsheet saves us a hell of a lot of time, and we know immediately where to go to find the one version of a doc.
- We have to eat our own dog food We’re a cloud company selling cloud-based tools. We preach collaboration and have to live and breathe it to stay on the cutting edge of technology. Smartsheet helps us do that.
Today at Brivo Labs, Smartsheet has become a core part of who we are and what we do. Project management, product management and the development lifecycle, file sharing, event planning – it’s all in Smartsheet now. We’ve got a high level view of where all of our different products stand in their respective lifecycles, if they’re on schedule, when they’ll hit the market, and our ongoing plans.
I love digging into the product and finding new ways to help my team work together more efficiently. For example, RYG balls are a fantastic way to quickly communicate status to other team members. It may seem like a small addition to your workflow, but anything to help us work together better is a pretty big win.
The other collaboration features are an ideal fit for startup teams, especially being able to share sheets with different viewing permissions. Automated alerts and notifications keep everyone on track and on the same page. Discussions keep our conversations going long after meetings are over.
We’ve started using templates to save our development timelines. When you build the number of products that we do, it’s key not to waste time reinventing the wheel. The spreadsheet interface is flexible enough to let you design your workflow the way that works best for your team, and then when you’ve perfected it, you can save that process as a template and use it again and again.
We’re working together in a really synergistic way, that just wasn’t possible with Excel.
I can tell you, since I started using Smartsheet, I haven’t opened Excel once. It’s like going from riding a 10-speed bike to a motorcycle… why would you ever go back?