How One FinTech Giant Overcame Complex Workflows and Optimized Their Usage of Asana
FOCUS
Process Optimization, Software Implementation and Training
SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTED
Asana
TEAMS TRANSFORMED
Brand Design
It's easy to think large organizations have it all figured out, with endless resources making all processes run like clockwork and lifting strain from employees. However, this is far from the truth. When organizations fail to systematically align on how work gets done, individuals carve out their own methods of operation, leading to double work, confusion, frustration, and task overwhelm.
That was the case with a leading fintech giant that we’ve worked with recently. Their Brand Design team faced significant challenges, from overwhelming project complexities to inefficiencies that led to burnout and communication overload. They reached out to us seeking to streamline their operations, improve their project visibility and accountability, and develop a sustainable, scalable way of working that could adapt as their team evolved. More importantly, with the Brand Design team being quite lean from the start, it was essential for leadership to understand their capacity and workloads clearly. This visibility was critical to justify the need to expand the team when necessary. With the competitiveness of their landscape, resolving these issues was crucial not just to stay ahead but to survive.
Problem: Complex Workflows, Staff Reductions, and Lack of Standardization
The Brand Design team was facing challenges that felt all too familiar. We've seen this play out many times, especially post-pandemic, with industry giants and SME alike. The following set of issues threatened efficiency, productivity, and the team’s overall well-being:
Overwhelming Complexity: Asana, their primary work management tool, boasts powerful features, yet the team often encountered challenges in using the platform to its fullest without feeling overwhelmed. The platform's complexity at times prevented the team from efficiently prioritizing and navigating their tasks despite its vast capabilities.
Reduced Staff and Increased Demand: A reduction in staff exacerbated the situation and increased the pressure on the team. This increased the need for a system that could streamline workflows and improve visibility and accountability to leadership.
Need for Real-Time Insights: The team lead needed a solution that could provide real-time insights into the team's progress. The goal was to emphasize the effects of staff reductions and the detailed requirements of each project.
Burnout: Due to an increasing workload and fewer resources, the team was edging closer to burnout. There was a clear need for a solution that could increase efficiency, streamline processes, and support scalability as the team aimed to grow.
Unaligned Teams: We discovered that the Consumer Creative team (which works closely with the Brand Design team) had their own workflow that was distinct and separate from that of the Brand team’s. This lack of coordination was a major problem, and meant that we had to not only standardize the processes within the Brand Design team but also extend our efforts to align the entire Marketing department.
Overcoming Workflow Complexity by Optimizing Asana
The Brand Design team was facing “analysis paralysis” with Asana, their primary work management tool. While the platform is helpful, the sheer amount of features added to the complexity of the team’s workflows, which made it harder for them to efficiently navigate and prioritize the mounting tasks and projects. To complicate things further, work was scattered across many spreadsheets, making it even more difficult to find and consolidate information.
To tackle this, we started with a deep dive to understand how the team was currently managing their work. Through Workflow Definition Form (WDF) submissions and live discovery workshops, we were able to identify and map out existing workflows. This exercise allowed us to reveal crucial bottlenecks and set the stage for the standardization of their operations. By validating and reorganizing these workflows within Asana, we moved away from the fragmented spreadsheet system to centralize information and create a more intuitive workspace. With this solid foundation, we were then able to recommend and implement the following solutions:
Simplified Intake Process
Before optimizing Asana for the Brand Design team, deliverables were all over the place. They had their work split between two channels for Brand Project Requests and Consumer Creative Requests, spread out over five different boards full of tasks. It became clear that these should've been organized into projects with neat subtasks, not just a sprawling list of tasks. In addition, key project owners were receiving intake requests via Slack, Teams, and Email, adding another layer of complexity to the way that requests were triaged, updated, and resourced. During our workshop, it stood out that their request intake was more complicated than it needed to be. So we collaborated closely with the team, and we mapped out a new, streamlined approach that consolidated these channels into a single, more efficient pathway for submissions. By introducing a unified intake form within Asana, we significantly cut down on manual entry points and eliminated the risk of errors or duplicate efforts.
Centralized Triage Project
The creation of the centralized triage project began with an in-depth analysis of the types of requests the team was receiving. We then set up a new project in Asana, designed specifically to collect and categorize these requests at the point of entry. Custom fields and tags were used to sort and prioritize tasks within this central hub. Through continuous real-time feedback, we refined this process to ensure it met the team's needs. Now, requests flow through a clear, organized path, ready for the team to tackle efficiently.
Dedicated Project Streams
We set up dedicated projects in Asana for each type of request the team received. During our planning sessions, we pinpointed exactly what each project needed and used Asana's custom templates and automation features to tailor these projects to fit the team's operations. A crucial step was implementing an automation rule on their intake board. This rule automatically turns form submissions (or requests) into projects and assigns them to the right project owners as soon as the team lead finishes the initial triage. This quick automation cut down on manual work and sped up the process of getting projects off the ground, which in turn greatly improved how they managed and tackled their workload.
Unified Marketing Operations
Given the Brand team's cross-functional nature, we had our sights set on a bigger goal, which is unifying the entire Marketing department. Our approach was designed to be scalable from the outset and required buy-in from different departments that worked closely with the Brand team. We were met with some resistance from the Consumer Creative (CC) team, who were pretty set in their own way of working. To win them over, we demonstrated the mutual benefits of a streamlined workflow and started an open conversation around long-term efficiency and collaboration. Gradually, we managed to overcome this resistance and get the CC’s team’s buy-in. This process laid a foundational strategy to unify and optimize the entire Marketing department's processes and set the stage for future scalability.
“I’m blown away by what has been created. I never imagined something so complex could be seamlessly integrated into Asana.”
— Brand Design Team Lead
Navigating Reduced Staff and Increased Demand
With the significant reduction of staff, the Brand Design team was struggling to cope with the rising demand. The workload was quickly outpacing the team’s capacity, and resulted in longer work hours and increasing stress, edging them closer to burnout. The situation called for fast and effective solutions to manage the workload better without sacrificing work quality or the team's well-being.
Workflow Optimization
We began by evaluating the team's current workflows to identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks. This evaluation led to the redesign of certain processes to ensure tasks could be completed more swiftly and with fewer resources. We focused on applying automation for repetitive tasks to allow team members to focus on higher-value activities.
Capacity Planning
To address the issue of uneven workload and potential burnout, we turned to Asana's Portfolios and Workload features to help the team with capacity planning. These tools allowed us to group projects for a high-level overview and visually track each member's workload. This helped balance task distribution and identify the need for additional support. With this new capacity planning strategy, team burnout was avoided by reallocating tasks before any member became overwhelmed, and also helped justify to leadership the hiring of new team members.
Real-Time Reporting for Leadership Visibility
By incorporating real-time reporting for leadership into our strategy, we aimed to improve decision-making by offering leadership timely insights into how the Brand Design team was achieving strategic goals despite staffing challenges. We tied Asana’s Universal Reporting into the current workflows and built dashboards for regular updates on project milestones, deadlines, and how resources were allocated. These reports highlighted areas where additional resources were needed and helped maintain alignment between the Brand team's efforts and the company's goals.
Asana Training
To ensure the training was perfectly tailored to the team’s needs, we conducted discovery workshops and gathered user stories. This initial step allowed us to understand the unique scenarios and requirements of different groups within the team. Once we had all the necessary information, we organized comprehensive training sessions that not only covered the basics of Asana but also focused on the new and improved workflows we had developed specifically for them. By making the training highly relevant to their everyday challenges and workflows, the team quickly became proficient in using Asana. This in turn led to major improvements in productivity and collaboration.
Results
Our collaboration with this leading fintech giant marked a significant turning point for their Brand Design team. Faced with major challenges like overwhelming workflows and staff reductions, and inefficiencies, our strategy to standardize the way they worked and optimize their Asana use yielded great results:
Streamlined Workflow: The simplified intake process and centralized triage project dramatically improved the team’s efficiency as well as reduced time and errors in managing requests.
Balanced Workloads: Capacity planning with Asana's tools prevented burnout by evenly distributing tasks and highlighted the need for, and justified, additional hires.
Informed Decision-Making: Real-time reporting to leadership ensured strategic alignment and resource allocation in tune with company goals.
Improved Overall Productivity: The comprehensive Asana training empowered the team to quickly adapt to their new workflows and eliminated the reliance on external tools. Through consolidating redundant and outdated processes, we streamlined both processes and communications within the team, which resulted in increased productivity and collaboration.
By addressing their immediate challenges and laying the groundwork for sustainable growth, we successfully alleviated the mounting stress on the Brand Design team and prepared them for future expansion. The project highlighted the importance of strategic process standardization, effective tool utilization, and cross-departmental collaboration in preventing burnout and securing operational efficiency in the long term.
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We’re here to transform your organizational workflows and team collaboration, and put an end to team burnout. Book a call with us to learn how our process optimization services and software solutions can meet your specific needs and drive success in your projects.
