The Problem Nobody Names: How Work Actually Moves

There is no shortage of software for managing work. In fact, there is almost too much of it. Project tools, workflow engines, collaboration platforms, low-code automation suites, ERP modules, and an ever-growing ecosystem of add-ons all promise some version of visibility, control, or efficiency.

And yet, in most organisations of any scale—especially in regulated or fast-growing environments—work still moves through a familiar combination of spreadsheets, emails, meetings, and individual judgement.

This is not because better tools do not exist. It is because the problem they are trying to solve sits in an awkward space between systems, teams, and decisions.

What has emerged over the last decade is not a single category, but a fragmented landscape attempting to address one underlying question: How does work actually get coordinated across an organisation once it stops fitting neatly inside one team or one system?

Why this problem is harder than it looks

Most organisations do not fail because they lack systems of record. Finance, HR, payments, customer data, and core transactions are usually well tooled.

The gap appears elsewhere:

• Work that cuts across functions

• Work that involves judgement rather than rules

• Work that is ongoing rather than project-based

• Work that is reviewed by regulators, boards, or auditors after the fact

In these spaces, organisations often default to spreadsheets—not because spreadsheets are ideal, but because they are flexible, fast, and socially acceptable.

The real issue is not Excel itself. It is spreadsheet inertia, combined with a quiet tolerance for ambiguity. Everyone knows the tracker is imperfect, but everyone also knows it is easier to keep it limping along than to confront the question of what should replace it.

That tolerance is what has created today's tooling landscape.

The main categories that have emerged

Over time, different classes of software have tried to fill this coordination gap, each from a different angle.

Project and work management tools

Tools such as Asana, Monday.com, and Atlassian products grew out of team-level delivery needs. They are strong where work is well-bounded, time-limited, and owned by a defined group.

They struggle when work is ongoing, judgement-heavy, or spans multiple functions with different incentives. Many organisations push them upward into portfolio views, but they still tend to reflect activity rather than accountability.

They solve team coordination well. They do not naturally solve enterprise coherence.

Enterprise workflow and BPM platforms

At the other end of the spectrum sit platforms like ServiceNow, Pega, and Appian. These are powerful, formal, and designed for scale, compliance, and automation. They work best where processes are well defined, rules can be codified, and change is centrally governed.

Their weakness is not capability, but friction. They are slow to adapt, expensive to implement, and often sit firmly under IT ownership. In environments where processes are still evolving, they can feel like over-commitment too early.

Many organisations know they may need these platforms eventually, but hesitate to start there.

The Microsoft gravity well

Then there is Microsoft—not as a single product, but as an ecosystem. Excel, SharePoint, Teams, Power Automate, and Power BI together form a kind of default operating layer in many organisations. They are familiar, already paid for, and endlessly configurable.

This stack is often where orchestration is attempted by assembly rather than design.

Sometimes this works. Often it produces fragile, bespoke solutions that depend on a small number of people who understand how the pieces fit together. When those people move on, the system quietly degrades.

The competition here is not product versus product. It is build versus buy, and convenience often wins—until it becomes a liability.

Core systems and ERP, at the edges

Systems like SAP or Oracle sit nearby, but they are rarely the answer to this problem. They are systems of record, not systems of coordination. They prioritise integrity, not flexibility. As a result, business teams often route around them when they need to manage work that does not fit neatly into predefined structures.

The emergence of work orchestration

What has gradually become clear is that none of these categories fully address the space between decision and execution.

This is where the idea of a work orchestration layer has emerged—not a project plan, not a rules engine, not a system of record, but a layer that makes ownership explicit, progress visible, and exceptions legible across organisational boundaries.

Platforms like Smartsheet are increasingly positioning themselves here, not as replacements for core systems, but as connective tissue between them.

Whether or not any particular platform succeeds is almost secondary. The fact that this category is emerging at all is the important signal.

The real competition is not software

The most important point in this landscape is often missed.

The dominant competitor to every one of these tools is not another vendor. It is tolerance of confusion, acceptance of partial visibility, and habitual reliance on spreadsheets that everyone knows are inadequate.

Organisations rarely decide to improve orchestration. They drift into it only when the cost of not knowing becomes higher than the cost of change.

Until that moment, ambiguity is cheaper than clarity.

Why this matters now

Regulatory pressure, operational scale, and automation expectations are all rising at the same time.

AI, in particular, is forcing an uncomfortable realisation: you cannot automate judgement, prioritisation, or escalation if you cannot first see how work actually flows. Automation needs somewhere sensible to land.

That is why this landscape exists, and why it is still unsettled.

A final observation

Most organisations do not need more tools. They need fewer accidental systems and a clearer answer to one simple question: Where does work live, once it stops being someone's personal responsibility?

Until that question is answered, spreadsheets will continue to fill the gap—not because they are good enough, but because they are familiar.

And that, more than any feature comparison, is the real challenge this entire category is trying to solve.