Itensil Brings Process To Web 2.0 Collaboration (excerpts)- April, 2008

KEY IDEA: Knowledge workers need repeatability in collaboration.

WHAT'S DIFFERENT: Itensil helps business people create agile knowledge apps.

HOW IT'S BEING USED: Processes that combine structure and creativity.

Itensil delivers new, browser-based collaboration tools to the market that are focused on a workflow model. These unique tools bring process-centric repeatability to ad hoc, knowledge-intensive tasks normally supported by unstructured collaboration tools.

The concept is novel and creative; consider Itensil if you want to experiment with ways to converge ad hoc work with structured processes, or if you are looking for a tool that combines right-brained and left-brained work styles.

Itensil has created a simple, yet powerful, solution to a problem that several major technology categories have yet to address. Traditional applications are too rigid, BPM suites are more agile but require specialized expertise, and collaboration tools do not provide enough control. In charting a course between collaboration and BPM - instead of adding one to the other - Itensil brings something new and different to the market.

Cool Vendors in the High-Performance Workplace, 2009 (excerpts)- March, 2009

Itensil "operationalizes" project spreadsheets, allowing simple process orchestration without the need for expensive tooling or development.

Why Cool... As movement toward self-supported definition and ownership of processes by business stakeholders and project teams continues, simple utilities, rather than suites to help improve the orchestration of teams, people, content and collaboration, may be required... Itensil helps knowledge workers manage and improve the unstructured, ad hoc processes involved in collaboration and decision making.

Available via SaaS and on-premises, Itensil derives the definition of business processes from text outlines — in documents, spreadsheets, or other vehicles — and presents them in a browser-based graphical process model... helps teams convert the words within planning documents into actions that are visible and can be monitored as well as improved... non-technical knowledge workers can construct mashup applications to "carry out" collaborative processes without the need to involve IT.

Its latest offering — Spreadsheets-on-Workflow — allows knowledge workers to take any project-based spreadsheet (a Microsoft Excel application programming interface is available) and extract logic to improve coordination, even in large teams, engaged in complex processes.

Who Should Care...

• Leaders or members of collaborative teams who are tasked with "figuring out" the best practices for working together on an ongoing basis, will find Itensil to be a cost-effective, lightweight approach to organizing, monitoring and improving ad hoc collaborative processes, thus saving money.
• Professional services firms seeking better leverage of a number of existing solutions by improving the coordination of contributors.
• Technology vendors looking for a simple SaaS onramp.