Let's kick this off with a hypothetical, shall we?
Jasmine's Struggle
Meet Jasmine, a Sr. Business Analyst at a digital marketing agency. She's the go-to for answers on all things marketing strategy, but lately, she's struggled to juggle her workload while effectively supporting her teammates.
Jasmine and her team currently use several tools, but there's no clear strategy for how or where these tools should be utilized. Without a unified system, teammates don't align on project scope, tasks fall through the cracks, and collaboration becomes more chaotic than productive. Frustrated by this, Jasmine decides to browse LinkedIn on her lunch break for some advice and stumbles on an article about the value of having a "single source of truth" for teamwork, and the light bulb immediately goes off.💡
"That's it! Everyone is working in silos, and what we all consider to be the truth about a project or a deliverable is not consistent across teams," she explains to herself.
Jasmine speed walks to her desk, pops open her laptop, and pounds away at the keyboard. Browser windows of Google searches, G2 reviews, Capterra pages, and endless YouTube videos fill her screen, yet she still feels lost. How is she supposed to find the tool that her team desperately needs to keep projects on track, agree on the details of projects and tasks, and allow her to share her knowledge in some wiki-like format? These questions form her use case, the first step in identifying the type of software you should be looking for.
After encountering SaaSQuest.io (shameless plug, I know), she further discovered the importance of bringing teams into centralized platforms or ecosystems that keep work in one place, allowing her to contextualize her work further with documentation or in-app communication.
By this point, Jasmine is sold and wants to move forward with a solution, so she and the team piloted used SaaS Quest to find Monday.com and give it was test run for a few weeks, along with Asana, ClickUp, and Trello—tools she decided the agency had the budget for and offered the features necessary to get work done efficiently. Ultimately, they chose Asana, and the team migrated their work from spreadsheets, Word docs, and Slack channels into one platform. Their productivity skyrocketed by 30% daily, and projects were completed on time every month after selecting the tool.
The Importance of Setting Conventions
Of course, that anecdote is possible for any team, but implementing a few components will make or break the process of transitioning a team to a new platform. The first and most important thing to do when selecting a new tool is to set clear and sensible conventions.
I have a saying that I encourage you to reflect on consistently when working on projects with your team:
"Teams are only as powerful as the conventions they set."
Since most teams today operate digitally, your chosen software is only as powerful as the guidelines you establish. Without clear protocols, constant switching between platforms drains time and increases the risk of errors and miscommunication. Establishing conventions ensures everyone is aligned, leading to more efficient and effective collaboration.
Tips for Setting Effective Conventions
You can follow several best practices to ensure you set the right conventions for your team. Here are some of the most important ones to consider:
Define the tool's purpose: Clearly articulate what each tool is used for. For instance, designate Slack for real-time communication, Asana for task management, and Google Drive for document storage. I recommend creating a shared list of do's and don'ts for each system, like so:
Slack Dos:
Communicate in channels for major updates and announcements that do not pertain to a specific project task.
Please add general files to a Slack channel that are not tied to a specific deliverable in our project.
Slack Don'ts:
Don't add chats or files to Slack channels if they are about a specific task or deliverable in the system, as those should be entered within the respective item so that they remain in context.
Don't include copies of your Slack message threads in the task comment section. Instead, if you must share a thread, export it to Word or Docs and share the file as a task comment.
Standardize naming conventions: Agree on naming structures for files, tasks, and projects to ensure easy navigation. For example, file names could follow this format: [ProjectName]_YYYY-MM-DD_Version. I always recommend that any team deploying a work management tool start the name of each task with a verb. For instance, "Create communication campaign," "Send a copy of the contract to John," or "Publish website mockups to Figma," etc.
Create a usage playbook: Develop a document outlining best practices, workflows, and expectations for tool usage. This is super helpful for all teammates to refer back to if they forget how to use a particular function or feature in your SaaS tool. It's especially valuable for change management, as you can document process changes within your system, making your playbook a dynamic document.
Conduct regular reviews: Periodically revisit these conventions to ensure they remain relevant and effective as the team evolves. You'll often find that some of the conventions you set when using a new platform are no longer needed down the road, streamlining your process and saving team members more time. It's also an acknowledgment that while the new tool solved a ton of your team's issues, it's never a perfect solution and needs to be tended to so you can identify bottlenecks and improvements based on new feature releases or functions you simply haven't thought of before.
Integrate Existing Tools for Seamless Collaboration
Tool integration is another vital aspect of team productivity. Teams often rely on multiple applications to manage different aspects of their work, from project management to communication. When you work for a company, there's often no way around this. Higher-ups in the business often team up with the IT department to determine which tools will make it to the official tech stack. So, if you're a small team looking to procure your own SaaS tool, you'll want to ensure it's compatible with other systems your company already uses so that you don't inadvertently make the silos worse.
According to Zylo's 2024 SaaS Management Index Report, the average mid-market-sized company has roughly 245 applications that collectively run their business. Smaller companies (1-500 employees), which we cater to more at SaaS Quest, use a whopping 162 applications on average. This is considerable in a digital era where platforms like ClickUp, monday.com, and others consolidate multiple types of work into one platform.
It's even worse witnessing companies use various tools in their tech stack siloed across different teams doing the same thing. If you're a team in a small company, this often happens due to employees expensing their software, and as a business leader, that's not something you want for several reasons.
The report offers profound insights that I highly recommend you check out here. Our key takeaway? By consolidating work as much as possible into a single source of truth platform or at least an ecosystem, you and your staff can avoid software overload and excessive expenses.
The Power of a Single Source of Truth
At SaaS Quest, we prioritize single source of truth solutions for visitors like you because you often reap the most benefits when bringing all your work together under one roof. But it's important that I clarify exactly what I mean by "under one roof."
There are two ways to approach a single source of truth solution:
Select a single source of truth platform
Operate within a single source of truth ecosystem
SSOT Platforms vs. Ecosystems
Single source of truth platforms are singular applications that bring multiple aspects of work together in one system. Take ClickUp, an app that positions itself as "one app to replace them all." It brings project management, task management, documentation, knowledge management, communication, reporting, and visual collaboration into one system. If you think about what that could mean for cost and time savings, you could replace a range of tools like Microsoft Word for documentation, Notion or Confluence for knowledge management, Slack for communication, Power BI for reporting, and Miro for visual collaboration. Let me be clear: it doesn't mean that ClickUp or any other tool consolidating many aspects of work into one platform offers better features than individual tools. They simply allow you to operate in one platform and connect those different aspects of work for ultimate contextualization, often with a robust set of features that will make you confident in your decision to stay in an SSOT platform.
On the flip side, this is easier said than done in a team environment. People on your team have already likely adapted to their existing software, and we're crossing our fingers that spreadsheets aren't included in the mix. However, it's still a reality for most people to use spreadsheets and other legacy tools throughout their careers to manage work. That's where a single source of truth ecosystem comes into play. If you can't migrate your team's work into a single tool, you'll need to operate within an interconnected network of applications. And this is often where the word "integration" is introduced.
An interconnected ecosystem of apps could look like the following:
Asana for managing team projects, tasks, workflows, and meeting notes
Miro for whiteboarding, brainstorming, and visual collaboration
Grow for reporting and analytics
Microsoft Outlook and Teams for communication
This sample list includes tools that integrate with one another, often with two-way sync. Asana integrates with Miro to embed boards within project briefs. Grow for custom dashboard reporting for data across your Asana workspace. Outlook creates tasks out of emails, and Teams connects tasks to conversations. To take it a step further, Miro also connects with Outlook and Teams, hence creating an ecosystem of apps that work together and handle distinct aspects of your team's work.
All in all, you'll need to consider what's realistic for you and your team. If you're part of a small startup or a business leader, you'll have more influence on which apps are procured and adopted by teams. So, bringing all your team's work into a single platform may be more feasible. If you're part of a larger company with established apps, you'll likely need to consider procuring a solution within an ecosystem. You'll need one hell of a business case to transition teams to a single platform, which isn't impossible but takes a lot more effort for migrating workflows, managing vendor contracts, provisioning licenses, and enacting an effective change management strategy. So, consider which approach to SSOT is right for you and your team.
Tip: The best thing you can do is talk to people. Understand what they love about their existing applications and workflows and what they wish could be improved. Ask them what they would like to see, how they'd like to collaborate in an ideal digital environment, and other questions to understand your current state so that you can more effectively plan your future state.
From a change management standpoint, involving your team helps you manage resistance, which often results from change. So be transparent and considerate and find the best solution that caters to your teammates' needs as much as possible.
Simplify to Amplify
Start by evaluating your current tools and identifying areas where consolidation could improve efficiency. Remember, the goal is to simplify, not complicate. When you simplify, you amplify your team's capability to be efficient and effective. When starting, I recommend planning to use the minimum amount of out-of-box features with the right pricing tier that fulfills the needs of your current workflow. Then, add features and explore new ways to streamline processes over time. I'm not suggesting you can't do this sooner, but when rolling out new software, you must focus on replacing your current state first and agree on a clear scope of work to make that happen. You don't want scope creep to occur when deploying a new tool, as you can complicate workflows, confuse your teammates with additions that weren't initially expected, and increase resistance among your peers.
Discovering the Single Source of Truth
An SSOT platform or ecosystem centralizes data, reduces costs, and enhances collaboration. Of course, adopting an SSOT solution requires a mindset shift and adaptability to new workflows. But the rewards—clarity, efficiency, and cost savings—make it worth the effort. By consolidating tools, you and your team can focus on what truly matters: achieving their goals and driving impactful results.
If you're looking for new SaaS tools to improve your team's workflow, check out our Team Hub, which showcases tools designed to support teams with effective work management and collaboration. You can also sign up for our Weekly SaaS Report, where we report the latest tools, industry trends, feature releases, tutorials, and more about all things SaaS for teams.
