It’s one thing when cute babies or playful cats draw major audiences on YouTube. It’s quite another when customers flock to a video post in order to learn about office software.

Yet, that’s exactly the position Smartsheet Inc. found itself in not long ago when a major financial company’s employees discovered the work application’s YouTube channel and trained themselves to use it. This success story was among many customer anecdotes shared at the Smartsheet Engage conference in Bellevue, Washington, including testimonials from GE Renewable Energy, Sodexo and PayPal.

“These are three massive companies, and the interesting theme from each of them was these groundswell opportunities for Smartsheet to really go viral in these organizations and make massive business impact,” said Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. “Even PayPal found it on their own and figured out how to use Smartsheet from YouTube videos.”

Martin spoke with co-host Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick) during an analysis of the Smartsheet Engage event in Bellevue, Washington. They discussed the collaborative benefits of Smartsheet’s technology and an increased need for enterprise application management tools. (* Disclosure below.)

Sharing with outside contributors

One feature driving Smartsheet’s enterprise adoption is the collaborative nature of its technology. Users have the ability to share projects with outside contributors while maintaining granular control through tools such as Smartsheet Dynamic View, which was announced this week.

“If I set up a project, I can share it with people outside my organization,” Frick said. “For Smartsheet it gives exposure to the tool to a new group of people. That’s a key part of the story here.”

Increased reliance on enterprise applications has made tools for managing workloads even more critical. Conference attendees heard one speaker describe a study that showed many employees have 13 to 30 apps open on any given day, and Smartsheet has built a set of integration tools to help manage the workload.

“You can’t really compete for that mindshare,” Martin said. “Employees have to be able to integrate to connect. That’s how the worker needs to see their information.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Smartsheet Engage event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Smartsheet Engage. Neither Smartsheet Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Smartsheet Engage