# ABUS Kransysteme – Asana case study > ABUS uses Asana to create full transparency in the HR department. Facility Management, Marketing, and Production are now also using Asana. Source: https://asana.com/case-study/abus ## ABUS takes things to a new level with Asana Europe Mid-market Manufacturing - [New employee onboarding](/templates/for/operations/new-employee-onboarding) - [Portfolios](/features/goals-reporting/portfolios) - [Workflows](/features/workflow-automation) With 27,000 customers and 500,000 users every day, ABUS Kransysteme is one of the most important European manufacturers of indoor crane systems, such as those used in factories. Founded in 1965 in Gummersbach, North Rhine-Westphalia, the family-run company now employs over 1,100 people at its production sites and in its international sales and service network. ABUS crane systems and hoists are precision-designed for industrial and factory halls and can lift loads of up to 120 tons. Customers worldwide come from the steel processing, automotive and shipbuilding industries, among others. In addition to manufacturing and installing the lifting and conveying systems, the company provides comprehensive consulting and assembly services. As a family business, ABUS stands for a continuous strategy and consistent customer orientation. This also means that the company is constantly evolving and adapting to new market requirements. For example, by digitalizing and optimizing workflows. Asana has played an important role in this. ## The goal: more transparency in day-to-day operations The digitization project was initiated by the HR department's requirement to bring more transparency to complex processes and to work more efficiently. At ABUS, many tasks come together in HR management, such as the creation of certificates, the recruitment and onboarding of new staff, employee development and time management. Although the team was able to use special software solutions for this, there was no tool that combined all HR processes under one roof. "We worked with several isolated solutions," recalls Rainer Bühne, ABUS shareholder and founder and managing director of the consulting company Keravonos, which specializes in supporting companies in their digital transformation. “These solutions could handle individual tasks, but they were not geared toward workflows. As a result, the HR department had little overview of what stage individual projects were at. Many processes were still paper-based; it was difficult to keep track of which document was currently on which desk." This created confusion and unnecessary delays. ## **One platform brings together a wide variety of workflows** A better tool was needed that would allow the HR team to consolidate and organize its many workflows on one platform. Because Rainer Bühne had already worked with Asana in a previous role at the climate and energy solutions specialist Viessmann, the decision to use the work management platform was easy. ABUS began adopting Asana in 2022, initially as an offer to the ten employees in the HR department. In the initial phase, its use focused on three typical processes: onboarding new staff, hiring temporary workers, and training and further educating existing specialists. Keravonos and ABUS had already analyzed, optimized, and streamlined many workflows as part of an overarching transformation project, so it was easy to digitally map these processes in Asana. We needed to move away from paper management on desks. With Asana, we were able to create transparency in our day-to-day work.What ABUS particularly appreciated was how flexibly Asana could be adapted to different requirements. "Our old HR tools were very rigid, and their functionalities often didn't fit our processes. With Asana, we have the freedom to create processes on the platform exactly as we want them. We don't even have to bother the IT department for that," explained a delighted Rainer Bühne. ## **Rapid expansion across the entire organization** The HR staff now use Asana to organize their entire day-to-day business, assign tasks, and manage responsibilities – but also as a digital collaboration tool to facilitate cooperation with other departments. From an initial ten employees, use quickly expanded to other areas such as facility management, marketing, and production. ABUS now has 360 Asana users, and more are expected to join. Keravonos has created a set of training materials to introduce new users to the system. Because much of Asana is self-explanatory, the basic training for beginners only takes about three hours. In the meantime, however, ABUS is also training advanced users to take some of the pressure off the support team. The goal is for each division of the company to have a power user who knows the advanced Asana features in detail and can, for example, create automation rules, forms, or project portfolios on their own. HR is at the center because this department deals with all areas. From there, Asana spread organically very quickly.So far, the implementation has been strongly driven by the day-to-day workflows and needs of each team. With Asana, ABUS has supported company-wide digitalization and optimized countless previously analog processes. For many employees, Asana is the main interface for the daily management of their own tasks and to-do lists, collaboration on projects, cross-departmental collaboration, and connecting this work to company goals. Across all users, around 115,000 individual tasks have already been recorded in Asana. Now ABUS wants to take its use to a new level and also map complex projects – for example, in crane development. Production employees can already submit and edit proposals for continuous improvement processes directly in Asana; this is how ABUS wants to create more transparency in the product development process. Use cases in resource and deployment planning are also conceivable. ## **The result: significant time savings** Rainer Bühne expects new benefits from the expanded use of Asana. In the HR department alone, Asana has already brought measurable time savings thanks to simpler work management. For example, the lead time for routine requests such as job advertisements or contract extensions has been shortened from four weeks to a few days. Thanks to the integration with the existing reference generator, supervisors can coordinate employee appraisals directly in Asana, which also saves time. With the newly optimized recruiting process in Asana, ABUS was also able to hire far more new talent in twelve months than before. The increased transparency also allows the HR department to act more strategically and proactively. Because ABUS will soon be celebrating its 60th anniversary, some employees will retire in the coming years. To proactively fill the vacancies, succession planning is already being worked out with Asana. And because the HR team can respond to requests much more quickly thanks to Asana, its popularity has also increased: other departments are proactively seeking collaboration. Overall, according to Rainer Bühne, the entire company has benefited: We have achieved a high level of automation with Asana. We have shortened feedback loops, eliminated manual errors, and removed bottlenecks. The tool has already delivered fantastic added value – we're excited to see what else we can achieve. ABUS uses Asana to create full transparency in the day-to-day work of the HR department The lead time for typical HR tasks has been shortened from 4-6 weeks to a few days With the optimized recruiting process in Asana, ABUS was able to hire far more new talent in twelve months than before In total, ABUS now manages over 114,000 tasks in Asana and uses the platform as a digital collaboration tool ### ABUS takes things to a new level with Asana ### Polestar: State-of-the-art technologies - in the vehicle and at the workplace ### FOCUS Bikes: Maximum acceleration with Asana ### Carmeuse achieves smarter HR management with Asana