I am Monique: How work management empowers and elevates people

By Alex Shootman, CEO

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Adobe's acquisition of Workfront has given me the chance to reflect on how we got here and what it means for our shared customers. The consensus of the media and analysts is that it’s a great union that will benefit both companies. Collectively, our technology will increase efficiency, collaboration, and productivity—making our solutions even more valuable. This external validation is important, but it’s not what I’m most proud of as the CEO of Workfront. I’m most proud of how work management elevates people. What I’m most excited about is empowering more Moniques.  

Let me tell you about Monique Evans, a Workfront System Analyst at Stanley Black & Decker who has been a Workfront customer for five years. Since becoming a part of the Workfront family and customer community, Monique has brought incredible value to her company in the form of streamlined work processes and measurable outcomes. She’s given teams more time for creativity, better visibility into work with a clear line of sight into what’s coming, and a deeper understanding of why their work matters to the business.

Monique’s ability to bring siloed teams together, align people to the right priorities, and see innovation through from ideation to implementation, has expanded her role and influence throughout her seven years and counting at Stanley Black & Decker. From graphic design to project coordination to system administration, Monique’s career continues to accelerate as she drives transformative change that moves marketing and the entire company forward—while making work a better experience for everyone.

Monique says about her current role, “Optimize operations—this is what I was born to do! Bring siloed teams together, help everyone report the same way and speak the same language, improve and automate processes to free people up for creativity, and make sure everyone feels a sense of pride in what they’ve accomplished.”

One of my favorite moments at Workfront is a Monique moment that happened at our 2019 Leap conference. As part of the event, we celebrated Workfront customers who had been promoted in their companies over the last year by harnessing the power of work management. I spoke about these individuals from the main stage and we lined the hallway with their photographs. Monique was one of the customers we recognized.

At the end of the conference, another customer stopped me in the hallway to tell me how Workfront was helping him grow his career. In the middle of listing his accomplishments, he paused as if startled by his revelation and exclaimed: “Hey Alex, I am Monique!”

This is one of the best parts about being CEO of Workfront—seeing people get promoted by using our work management platform to manage their work and their teams’ work. We want everyone to experience Monique’s level of success and empowerment. Our 007 clandestine goal inside Workfront is more Moniques!

How exactly does work management and Workfront help our customers—the Moniques of the world—achieve positive outcomes that matter to their teams and their companies? It starts with empowering people to do their best work. And Monique is the perfect example of this. Monique, as a former graphic designer, knows how important it is to ensure marketing teams have the time, tools, and information to be more creative and do their best work. With Workfront, Stanley Black & Decker’s marketing team is empowered to work in their favorite creative platforms (Adobe Creative Cloud of course!) and plug into other workflows for visibility and efficiency—while eliminating mundane tasks through automation.

Monique says automation is one of her company’s top innovation goals because it improves quality, consistency, and velocity. And it frees up the company’s best talent to focus on the jobs they were hired to do, keeping them engaged and at the top of their game creatively. When employees are engaged, they’re more productive. They’re happier. They stick around longer, create better outcomes for their companies, and grow professionally.

Monique says, “Our mission at Stanley Black & Decker is ‘be a force for good.’ To me, that’s what we’re doing with Workfront. Yes we’ve improved quality and can manage the priority of workloads. And yes this is helping us focus more time and resources on innovation. But being efficient isn’t about scarcity, it’s about making sure that our best people can do their best work, and then go home and focus on their families. When we’re a force for good in how we work by improving the employee experience, we positively impact the customer experience.”

As Workfront starts our next chapter as part of Adobe, there are so many new opportunities to expand the number of customers we serve, innovate with our technology, and extend our partnerships. Regardless of the new mountains we choose to climb, the one thing that will always bring a smile to our face is to hear a customer say, “Hey—I am Monique!”