AppsFlyer boosts agility and coordination of its high-growth international team with Asana

With data-driven marketers at 12,000 companies including Coca-Cola, Nike, and Visa choosing AppsFlyer, it’s the global leader in mobile attribution and marketing analytics. AppsFlyer provides independent measurement solutions and innovative tools to grow and protect mobile businesses.

Having grown rapidly in recent years, with over 900 employees across 18 offices worldwide, AppsFlyer faced challenges, particularly for the fast-growing marketing team. They struggled to coordinate work across functions and timezones.

Most of AppsFlyer’s day-to-day marketing activities are broken into five different regions with dedicated, highly autonomous teams in the US, Latin America, China, APAC, and EMEA. Connecting the dots and keeping everyone aligned with the same goals and KPIs was a complex task.

Vast spreadsheets were being used to keep teams aligned, but they weren’t up to the task. These tools lacked accountability, visibility, and couldn’t scale in real time with the pace and volume of work taking place.

With more clients choosing AppsFlyer and new employees being onboarded worldwide, there was no room to get bogged down with spreadsheets. AppsFlyer needed a purpose-built tool for coordination and collaboration.

Rethinking international workflows

Ziv Peled, Chief Customer Officer at AppsFlyer, knew that in light of the company’s worldwide growth, they needed to rethink their workflows holistically.

Ziv set out with a mission to bolster connections between the global teams, improve processes, cut time spent on planning, and increase the sharing of resources.

Ease of use and the platform’s intuitiveness drew Ziv to Asana, and he was further impressed by Asana’s flexibility. With multiple teams on different continents who valued autonomy, he knew a one-size-fits-all approach wouldn’t cut it. Asana offered a way to centralize tasks, projects, and goals while leaving teams to decide how they work best.

There are only a handful of tools I can say I’m in love with… I can definitely say I'm in love with Asana.”

After seeing the impact Asana had within his own team and fellow leadership suite, Ziv knew Asana was the right tool to empower AppsFlyer with workflows fit for their rapid expansion.

However, to ensure each distributed global team could maximize their value with the tool, AppsFlyer enlisted the support of Aurel Laor, Global Marketing Project Manager, to help drive adoption and educate the business on the new solution.

Aurel joined the team just as AppsFlyer was experiencing rapid growth. He witnessed first hand the sheer energy behind the company's trajectory but recognized the risk of fragmentation. Teams that were evolving week by week around the globe needed a single source of truth to stay aligned.

Part of Aurel’s role was to manage growth effectively, and reorganizing how they use Asana was a lynchpin in his strategy. However, he knew a prescriptive approach wouldn’t work. Instead, he focused on educating teams and individuals on the value Asana could offer them, empowering them to embrace the tool in ways that worked for them—from the bottom-up.

While championing the flexibility to adapt to different work styles, Aurel also held best practice sessions for those wanting to master the basics. He also learned a lot by diving into Asana’s Community Forum for tips in the process.

So long, spreadsheets

Asana now acts as a virtual Project Management Office for AppsFlyer, streamlining processes and boosting organization. It keeps the distributed, global teams working in sync and moving with agility, without losing time to cumbersome tools or time-zone differences.

Further, with Asana’s fundamental transparency, Aurel has real-time visibility into what’s working and what’s not so he can continuously iterate and improve on processes.

When it comes to big projects, Asana’s benefits have been clearly felt. AppsFlyer’s Performance Index Project, a comprehensive report on the performance of mobile media sources, takes around four months to compile with a team of 40 people. Using Asana’s Timeline view the team could provide clarity to stakeholders while pulling off a seriously-impressive same-day launch across eight languages.

Cross-functional work has also benefited at every level of the business. Coordinating with regional General Managers and other executives, Ziv himself now feels he can better collaborate and ladder-up work to the CEO, as well as guide and provide feedback to his team.

Asana provides an opportunity for me to work with people across the business, from the CEO to people on my team in a more streamlined way. It makes me a better leader.”

Meanwhile, Aurel has discovered how Asana works best for the global Marketing team, embracing the Rules feature, which automates routine steps and saves him between 10 and 30 actions each day.

Both Ziv and Aurel are rightfully proud of the business impact they’ve achieved so far. Quality and speed of work has improved, organizational agility has increased, and managers have more visibility and understanding of their team’s workload. But their work, and Asana’s role, has only just begun.

Ready for the next stage of growth

Perhaps most importantly for this thriving international business, Asana has helped AppsFlyer ensure regional teams have the visibility and access to headquarters needed to progress their work without timezone-enforced bottlenecks.

And, with revitalized workflows and processes, AppsFlyer won’t be standing still. Ambitious growth plans, evaluating how they interact with people they market to, and new ways of working with their customers are all on the horizon.

With a growing community behind them, and Asana acting as a source of truth, the whole team—from Ziv at the head office to Aurel’s colleagues in distributed marketing departments and beyond—are confident they’ll be delivering their best work in the months and years ahead.