Wrike has launched a new version of its project management platform with an emphasis on real-time analysis and new features such as syncing calendars to work projects. The new platform, Wrike Enterprise, gives the company a deeper focus on the corporate market for its collaboration-centered tools. It gives customers a way to crunch project management data in the order of a million updates per day. This is data around work items such as tasks completed, the original time planned for the project and the historical data that is associated with the project. The data is presented in “instant infographics,” that help people see the latest updates to projects, said Wrike CEO Andrew Filev in an email interview. Historically, project managers have done detailed plans that they then track. The manager periodically updates the projects and then compares the current state to the baseline established at the start of the project. With the Wrike platform, the data from every interaction is stored and then compared to historical data and then presented in a chart. A customer can see the state of the project from different dimensions such as the realistic amount of time a project will take to get done,  what requires immediate action and how performance of an employee has evolved over time.

A new  user group feature in Wrike Enterprise allows the project manager to include employees in multiple work groups by project, department, or any other ad hoc query. It can share the needed data with the whole group and keep permissions organized. This allows the manager to keep track of the overall project without hundreds of people making their own changes. 

Wrike’s new “Custom Calendars,” syncs projects with the calendars of other members on the team. It allows the manager to track a colleague’s vacations, PTO and extra working days. It is designed to avoid schedule overlaps and build more accurate plans. There are also new ways to integrate a company’s  identity into the service. Wrike has also added new security controls for larger customers. In October, Wrike raised $10 million in funding.  It was the first round since the company was originally founded seven years ago. The company has traditionally served the small business community but this release points to its additonal focus on the larger enterprise companies of the world. Wrike competes with the likes of Atlassian and Asana. But its advantage is in its crisp user interface which it can now leverage even more as it embraces data as a way for project managers to better keep track of their projects.