Earlier this month, Smartsheet acquired Seattle-based 10,000ft to enhance resource management capabilities for Smartsheet customers.
I’ve been at Smartsheet on the product team for almost five years, and I’ve worked on a ton of fun features like critical path and duration in hours, card view, and filters. Now I have the opportunity to work with the 10,000ft team to build our integration to enhance the Smartsheet platform.
Following the acquisition, I spoke with Anne Prins, VP of Growth at 10,000ft about what we’re most excited about, what this means for our customers, and what the journey ahead looks like for our integration.
Robin Sherwood: So to get us started, what is 10,000ft? What’s your elevator pitch?
Anne Prins: 10,000ft enables organizations to make more confident operational decisions by improving decision making and forecasting through real-time capacity planning, resource management, and reporting.
Those could be decisions about who is best suited to work on a specific initiative, what pipeline projects need staffing, or their forecast for hiring.
The way I like to think about it is, “If talent is your greatest competitive advantage, how is your company harnessing that talent?” I think that’s why resource management is so important for organizations — it provides visibility into how people’s work aligns with them being their best and giving their best to the team.
AP: Why did Smartsheet decide to acquire 10,000ft? What was the impetus for that?
RS: Here at Smartsheet, we pride ourselves on always being very customer driven with the features that we develop. We’re continuously assessing ways to enhance our platform and deliver greater value to customers. Sometimes that means building new capabilities ourselves. Other times that means acquiring companies with existing solutions in specific areas.
We heard from our customers about their need for effective resource management and resource reporting. Effective resource management is critical for many organizations, and we wanted to figure out how best to help our customers meet that need.
Most tools that specialize in capacity planning are overly complex and costly to manage. Smartsheet was drawn to the different approach that 10,000ft takes by offering a resource management tool that’s easy to use while also offering enterprise-grade capabilities.
RS: Why is 10,000ft excited about this acquisition?
AP: There is tremendous opportunity and synergy to solve key customer problems using Smartsheet and 10,000ft together. It's insane how much opportunity there is to say [to our 10,000ft customers], "[With Smartsheet] we can now manage workflow requests, we can now think about having P&L reporting, we can now think about SOX compliance, we can now think about vacation requests and approvals."
RS: How have your customers responded to the announcement?
AP: Responses have been really positive. We’re seeing excitement from 10,000ft customers who are already familiar with Smartsheet — they can see the opportunity that combining our technologies would offer them. There are customers like Ogilvy, which is a customer of both Smartsheet and 10,000ft, that we’ve been working with prior to this acquisition to figure out a workflow between Smartsheet and 10,000ft. This will be great for them.
That said, my favorite feedback from a customer on the acquisition announcement was an email in all caps that said, “THIS. IS. AWESOME.”
AP: Now that we’ve announced the acquisition, can you tell me what’s next? What does the integration journey look like, and how will 10,000ft enhance the Smartsheet platform?
RS: We need to sit down with a number of our customers who are reaching out to us and ask them, “How do you want to do this work? What do you want in 10,000ft? What do you want in Smartsheet? How do you want the data to flow between those things?” First and foremost, we’ve got to get our research teams out in the field and talk to customers. So there’s a lot of work there.
Speaking more broadly, with the integration of 10,000ft, Smartsheet customers will benefit from the ability to plan and allocate resources across their projects, optimize resource allocation by function or skill set, track time against forecast, and gain real-time portfolio level visibility into the status of budgets and deliverables.
RS: So what’s your advice for Smartsheet customers who can’t wait for the integration and are eager to get started with 10,000ft?
AP: The best way for them to get started is to visit the 10,000ft website and sign up for a free 14-day trial to see what we’re all about.
