Blackboard Adopts Smartsheet To Implement Client Programs 25% Faster

BELLEVUE, Wash., June 19, 2017 – Smartsheet, a cloud-based enterprise platform for managing and automating collaborative work, today announced that Blackboard Inc., an industry leader providing enterprise technology and solutions for education, has selected Smartsheet to manage the installation and operation of Blackboard Transact campus payment systems across hundreds of U.S. colleges.

Every installation by the Blackboard Transact team, which requires a tight turnaround during summer months when students are off-campus, requires the careful orchestration of third-party vendors, banks, university staff, and numerous other partners. Prior to Smartsheet, the team was managing up to 50 simultaneous implementations with offline, siloed tools such as Microsoft Project, Microsoft Excel and email, leading to an inefficient and sub-optimal client experience.

By moving their workflow to Smartsheet's cloud-based collaborative work management platform, the Transact team is able to manage partners across all stages of the process to ensure on-time and successful implementations across college campuses. The reduced time spent on managing inefficient processes frees up time for Blackboard to close more deals, while also saving their clients thousands of dollars in reduced billable hours.

"We were sending a lot of email back and forth, and working out of Excel documents that were complicated and where it was difficult to manage version control," said Daniel Minutella, Senior Manager Client Services at Blackboard. ?Smartsheet cuts down on implementation times and, more importantly, ensures that students are welcomed back to campus with an exceptional service that's fully ready."

With Smartsheet, Blackboard has continued plans to:

• Distribute workloads across multiple stakeholders, while giving company leadership real-time visibility into projects.
• Create an organized and professional experience for customers in order to help close more deals.
• Ditch lengthy project status meetings each week, saving thousands of hours of project management.

To learn more about how Smartsheet can help manage and automate collaborative work visit http://www.smartsheet.com.

About Smartsheet
Smartsheet is an enterprise SaaS platform for managing and automating collaborative work. Our award-winning solutions deliver value for tens of thousands of paying customers and millions of information workers across more than 190 countries. Recently named to the Forbes Cloud 100 list of the world's best cloud companies, customers like Netflix, Salesforce, the GSA, Google, and over half of the Fortune 500 use Smartsheet internally, with clients, and partners.

Smartsheet is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and, as of June 2017, has more than 580 employees in its Bellevue and Boston offices. To learn more, visit www.Smartsheet.com.