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Senshin vs Smartsheet: which fits?

Smartsheet gives you a very capable grid and the freedom to build whatever you like in it. Senshin gives you a delivery record that is already shaped. We are the vendor of Senshin, so read this knowing we have a horse in the race.

At a glance

Quick view of Smartsheet and Senshin side by side, so you can see in a minute whether this is a real choice or two different jobs.

• Built for: collaborative work management in a familiar grid.
• Senshin is built for: one delivery record across plan, RAID, finance, people and governance.
• Strongest at: flexible, shareable sheets and workflows.
• Senshin is strongest at: a structured delivery record with linked risks, cost and people.
• Typical user: any team organising work.
• Senshin typical user: project managers, PMOs and sponsors accountable for delivery.

What Smartsheet is built for

Smartsheet presents itself as a work management platform built around a spreadsheet-like grid, with different views, automation and dashboards. People like it because anyone who has used a spreadsheet can start.

That flexibility is its strength; it also means the structure of your delivery data is largely yours to design and maintain.

• A grid that feels like a spreadsheet, with Gantt, card and calendar views on top.
• Shared sheets, forms and automations for routine workflows.
• Dashboards and reports built from your sheets.
• Flexibility: teams shape it to their own process.

Where Senshin fits

Senshin is a delivery intelligence platform that sits above your systems of record. It keeps one record for the plan, the RAID log, finance, people and governance, then produces reports and runs what-if scenarios from that single record.

The idea is simple: the system where work is done and the place where a delivery lead gets the honest picture do not have to be the same place.

• A ready structure for delivery: plan, RAID, finance, people and governance connected.
• Weekly and SteerCo reports generated from that record.
• Control Tower view of project health across the portfolio.
• What-if simulations before you commit to a change.
• Sensei to help interrogate and summarise.

When Smartsheet is the better choice

If your teams already live in sheets and want one flexible place to track all sorts of work, Smartsheet is a very sensible choice. A broad, general platform beats a specialist one when the work is varied.

Senshin is deliberately focused on delivery and will feel narrower.

• Varied work beyond projects: requests, events, operations, onboarding.
• Teams who want to design their own columns, forms and automations.
• Organisations that have already invested in sheets and templates.
• Cases where ease of adoption across many departments matters most.

Who should pick which

Pick Smartsheet for broad, flexible work tracking. Pick Senshin when you want delivery governance without building and policing the structure yourself.

• Operational teams tracking many kinds of work: Smartsheet.
• Project manager who needs RAID, budget and plan to agree: Senshin.
• PMO wanting consistent reporting across projects: Senshin.
• Large organisations: often both, for different layers.

Using them together

Senshin can import an existing plan with document ingestion, so a plan kept in a grid does not need retyping.

Carry on delivering day to day in Smartsheet if the team prefers it, and use Senshin for the joined-up risk, finance and governance view.

• Import the current plan.
• Set up the RAID log and governance around it.
• Keep team-level task updates where the team works.
• Report upwards from one record.

Where this lives in Senshin

Frequently asked questions

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Last updated: 2026-10-22