Acerbis streamlines operations, cutting project catch-up time from days to minutes

Highlights

Challenges

• Projects were managed with a custom-built database and emails, making it very difficult to gain a real-time overview.

• Lack of a central workspace meant valuable input from teams on the “fringes” of a project was lost, hindering cross-functional collaboration.

• Frequent, time-consuming meetings were the only way to get project updates, creating a costly drain on resources.

Solution

• Implemented Asana as a single source of truth, using a standardized, stage-gate framework to manage all projects.

• With support from AD Consulting, Acerbis mapped and optimized existing processes into Asana, overcoming legacy ways of working. 

• Set up AI-powered dashboards and reports to deliver instant, hierarchical visibility across all Acerbis OEM projects.

Outcomes

• Recouped its one-year investment in just five weeks by reducing the number of costly, traditional project meetings.

• Historical tracking allows managers to “rewind” and review how projects evolved, providing immediate, data-driven answers for executive meetings.

• Enabled cross-team collaboration, allowing engineers from different divisions to share solutions across different applications, projects and fields.

• Improved cross-team communication, fostering engagement and giving a voice to previously sidelined contributors.

Meetings are expensive. I value people’s time highly, and Asana has reduced waste and improved efficiency. Just in meeting and alignment time saved, within one month you’ve recouped the implementation cost.”

Asana for project management

A structured framework for complex manufacturing

As an Italian manufacturer, Acerbis's projects are complex, with each one spanning from 400 to 1,100 tasks. Before Asana, the company relied on a custom database. While it provided a degree of structure, it was a "one-way ticket" where information was manually collected and entered by one person. This created a significant bottleneck and made it difficult for others to contribute.

Asana provided a new, collaborative framework for managing these intricate workflows. With the help of AD Consulting, Acerbis implemented a stage-gate project management model. This structure guides projects through virtual gates, from the initial Request for Quotation (RFQ) to final production, with specific exit criteria defined at each stage. 

Standardized workflows reduce complexity

• Stage-gate model mapped directly in Asana ensures projects follow a consistent framework from RFQ to production.

Portfolio management drives visibility

• Managers can view the status of all Acerbis OEM projects in a single portfolio dashboard.

• Hierarchical project views provide a clear overview of project statuses, timelines, and risks, without needing to dive into individual tasks.

Historical tracking simplifies reporting

• Asana’s ability to track changes over time allows for easy reporting.

• Leaders can “rewind” two weeks to review exactly what changed, a level of visibility that wasn’t possible with previous tools.

• AI-powered reports give leaders instant visibility into trends, key updates, and emerging patterns across projects turning historical data into actionable insights.

The dashboard is extremely easy to set up. In a single screen you can immediately see when projects will be delivered, which ones are at risk, and quick, concise summaries of project status. I challenge anyone to do this as easily with another tool.”

Asana for cross-departmental collaboration

A shared language for innovation

In a manufacturing environment, a project's success often depends on seamless collaboration between diverse teams, from engineers to production. Before Asana, valuable input from colleagues in departments like production and process industrialization was often lost. Their ideas, shared informally or via email, never became a part of the project's permanent knowledge base.

Asana solved this by becoming a single, central workspace where every piece of information is captured. This transformed project management from a one-way street into a real team workspace where ideas are shared and problems are solved. This has created a "virtuous cross-pollination" between Acerbis's industrial and motorcycle divisions, where engineers share solutions across different applications.

Centralization Drives Engagement

• All alignment information is now centralized, organized, and accessible to everyone, fostering a real team workspace where ideas are shared and problems are solved.

• With all information in one location, team members from different departments are more engaged, providing proactive input from the earliest stages of a project.

Aligning the Entire Team

• For Antonio, Asana has become a "common language" that aligns the entire team.

• This clarity has significantly reduced the need for traditional meetings, replacing them with brief, agile stand-ups.

Confidentiality and Access Control

• The clear hierarchical access control in Asana's Portfolios allows Acerbis to manage sensitive information, such as sales margins or client conditions, with confidence.

I always say to our top management, we were like a company with people speaking Czech, English, French, and Italian. We now have a shared language—Asana. That’s why it’s a success story.”

Vision for scalability and strategic growth

Looking ahead, Acerbis plans to expand its use of Asana to its after-market division, aiming to create a single, unified work environment across all three business units. This will enable the company to easily identify new business opportunities and leverage the technical expertise gained in its OEM projects for a broader range of products. As Antonio puts it, what made Asana work at Acerbis was their pre-existing solid, structured project management practices. The tool simply unlocked this potential, making it feel “almost like something innate—like there was always a little Asana inside us, waiting to be formalized.”