Hey Thanks for such a response. I am sure after trying the plugin for few days you may see the reason why we developed Contentcloud.
Wordpress is awesome in usability, but online content is changing from one person work to team collaboration, on a single article! The reason many publishers tend to shift from WordPress is because they need a collaborative environment for their team, and can't let it open for a writer completely. We believe we are helping in solving such a need where workflow is used by publication, and through ContentCloud help in implementing it.
Templates and Desks are here to communicate with writers better, and also helping other team members, like copy editor, to work on it. I understand that you may think that you are not engaging in "Administrative" tasks, but I think it is the way we have started seeing that we no more think email communication with team members as not Administrative tasks.
Will love to give you a demo whenever you are available. Also do try the pro or empire version. We dont even ask for credit card details, and there is no compulsion in any manner. Want you to try as we are trying to help publishers like you who are producing quality content, on different blogs with more than couple of team members.