Blended Perspectives is a leading Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner based across North America. We provide full lifecycle support for all Atlassian tools including consulting, license management, hosting, support, cloud migration, and training. However, we also have a number of offerings that are completely unique within the Atlassian ecosystem.
Through our Synthesis™ Solution Blueprints, MARS™ database of 3rd party applications, and our vast library of specialized resources covering every facet of the Atlassian ecosystem, we are unmatched among all Atlassian Partners with regard to the ways in which we can provide value to our customers.
Synthesis™ gives organizations the ability to quickly and easily implement complex solutions while utilizing the tools they already have. Through MARS™ we can use our position as an objective participant in the Atlassian Marketplace to provide unbiased and data driven opinions on what apps are best suited to our customers’ needs. While our library of specialized resources provides knowledge on a range of topics, from category reports on all major Atlassian Marketplace categories to insights into industry best practices like ITIL 4.
Synthesis™
At Blended Perspectives, we provide an array of Solution Blueprints for business and technical needs. Blueprints are formulas and preconceived sets of templates made up of issues/items, workflows, 3rd party apps, and industry best practices. These Blueprints form our Synthesis™ library and work to create a number of Solutions including PPM, GRC, DevOps, ITSM, HR, and much more. You can find our entire catalogue of Synthesis™ Solution Blueprints here.
Synthesis™ enables our consultants to leverage the preexisting Blueprints and the Atlassian portfolio of products to build solutions faster, more comprehensively, and to execute consulting work effectively while ensuring best practices are followed.
By providing a low cost solution with fast implementation time, Synthesis™ gives organizations the potential to scale back existing IT investments, improved organizational efficiency & increased productivity, all while driving consistency and best practices across the enterprise by establishing a single source of truth.
We successfully implemented our Real Time PPM Solution at Rogers Communications (the largest telecommunications organization in Canada). Working in partnership with a Rogers team, Blended Perspectives successfully completed a PPM Solution project for Rogers which is currently providing real-time reporting at all levels for $2.1B of capital initiatives. Rogers were very pleased with the ability of the Blueprint to “standardize intake and project management and deliver cost savings through tool simplification”. You can read the case study and find our joint webinar on the implementation here.
MARS™
MARS™ is our Marketplace Analytic Research Service of 3rd Party Atlassian Marketplace apps. While many partners out there focused on making their own apps, we believed that we could bring greater value to the Atlassian ecosystem by creating a quantitative and objective database covering every facet of the Atlassian Marketplace. Therefore, in late 2017 we created MARS. Unlike other Partners whose main focus is on selling you apps that they make, we are able to use MARS™ to find the best of breed apps that most suit our customers’ specific needs and requirements. MARS™ is consistently updated with all of the latest Marketplace data on instances, reviews, version releases, platform, and much more, ensuring our advice is always up to date.
We believe that MARS™ is necessary for two reasons:
Marketplace Size
Firstly, a major barrier to optimal utilization of the Atlassian Marketplace is the sheer size of it: with over 2,000 vendors, 4,000 apps, and 1.6M active installs there is a lot to sort through when you have no systematic way to do so. Obviously, the size of the Marketplace is an incredible asset, however, for many users, it does not feel that way since they struggle to find what they’re looking for among the mass of applications.
MARS™ is able to overcome this problem through The 500 Club. Early on in our study of the Atlassian Marketplace, we discovered that 15% of apps generate 83% of all active installs. The common feature of these apps was that they all had over 500 installs and these apps now make up our “500 Club”. The 500 Club is important as it enables us to focus our energy and resources on analyzing the apps that customers are using the most and most want to know about. This isn’t to say that we ignore all of the other non-500 Club apps but that we just pay particular attention to apps with over 500 instances. In fact, through MARS we can see all instances of Marketplace apps and many unique insights, such as fast-moving smaller apps which will likely be widely used and popular in the future.
Self-Categorization
Secondly, the issue of Marketplace size is exacerbated by the second reason why we believe MARS is necessary: app self-categorization. When vendors put their apps on the Marketplace they are able to self-select multiple categories from Atlassian’s Marketplace category list. While this is democratic it has resulted in app over-categorization.
MARS™ overcomes this problem as we have put a lot of effort into creating our own categories and assigning every 500 Club app to one. Unlike Marketplace Categories, our categorization is based on primary functionality and utility. Our “meaningful categorization” makes it easy to find and compare apps that will work for the particular needs of our customers.
PLRs
MARS™ isn’t the only way we help our customers maximize the value of their 3rd party app stack. Through our free annual “Platform Leverage Reports” to all customers, we provide a full analytical breakdown of all apps held by a customer and compare their instance to the Marketplace as a whole.
Powered by MARS™, the PLR increases awareness of opportunities to improve performance in particular categories and to understand where innovation opportunities exist. We believe this report allows customers to make strategic decisions about which apps are right for them and allow customers to move past reliance upon inefficient user requests.
Specialized Resources
At Blended we’re always busy generating content covering all areas of our collective expertise:
MARS™ and its “meaningful categorizations” ensures that we can create category reports on all of our major categories since the apps in each of these have similar use cases and can be directly compared. For instance, we have an array of information on all of our categories including Time Management, Planning, Integration, Diagramming, Reporting, Testing, and so on. You can find all category reports here.
Meanwhile, you can also find an abundance of Blended content on any other sphere of the Atlassian space including Agile ITSM, DC Migrations, Integrated ITSM, Cloud Migrations, Jira Align, and content on our own Solution Blueprints such as this one on GRC.
If you have any questions then please get in touch with us at hello@blendedperspectives.com.