As a global technology company, HRS focuses on continuous innovation and the constant improvement of efficiency. The company works with multinational corporations, business travelers, and hotel partners to redefine how companies work, stay, and pay. Its business divisions are accordingly called Stay, Work and Pay. The HRS platform supports, among other things, purchasing, booking, and cost analysis; it can be connected directly via an application programming interface to the major customer's ERP system, its payment systems, travel expense reporting, and more.

In order to create such a smooth user experience for new corporate clients with customer-specific integrations, the initial onboarding phase can take several weeks. Customer requirements are implemented by dedicated Customer Delivery employees. Numerous implementation projects have to be managed in parallel, and specialists from the fields of payment and billing, sales, content, and technology work hand in hand – a complex undertaking.

Asana as a daily work tool

Since mid-2022, the HRS Group has been using Asana Enterprise as a daily work tool to drive its many customer projects forward in a targeted manner. To live up to the corporate value of customer centricity, Asana was to support the HRS team in carrying out tasks more smoothly and efficiently. The number and complexity of projects, with their numerous interfaces, was a particular challenge.

“We urgently needed a professional work management solution that would allow for better collaboration, provide a constant overview of the project portfolio, and be easy to use,” explains Francis Berrie, Director of Global Customer Delivery at HRS. “We could no longer rely on Excel spreadsheets and manual processes. And the existing project management tool we had access to was simply not user-friendly.”

Together with CIO Jochen Jaser, the Customer Delivery team formulated its requirements for the new solution: these included the ability to clearly present and manage all the work involved in major internal and external projects, to define uniform templates for recurring processes, and to share project progress and milestones with others.

The choice quickly fell on Asana Enterprise. The platform impressed not only with its functionality, which covered all requirements, but also with its data protection-compliant data storage – and its intuitive user interface. Justyna Kobierska, Head of Global Customer Delivery, describes it this way: “Asana brings the business and technical perspectives together. As a manager, I can see the status of all projects in real time in the portfolio and demonstrate to the board what has been accomplished. At the same time, Asana supports a straightforward, relaxed way of working within the team that fits HRS. After all, we also want to enjoy our work.”

Asana brings the business and technical perspectives together. It supports a straightforward and highly efficient work style.

Justyna Kobierska

Head of Global Customer Delivery

Launch at full speed

Asana adoption began in February 2022 and took place within a tight two-month timeframe. Together with Asana implementation partner Bridgeflow, HRS established a Champions Hub of eight power users who created the first HRS-specific workflows in Asana, shared their experiences in workshops, and then, as multipliers, passed on what they had learned to the individual user groups. These Asana Champions continue to be available for Q&A; new employees can also access online training sessions. "The most important thing is not how to use the individual features in Asana, because they are often self-explanatory," says Francis Berrie. "Rather, we show new team members how we work and how we at HRS get the most value out of Asana."

Initially, the core users were primarily the customer delivery and customer success employees. Other enthusiastic users quickly joined in – from the purchasing department, human resources, IT and marketing, among others. HRS currently has 310 users and 30 guests in a total of 104 teams. The goal is for even more employees to have access to Asana soon.

Making business life better

In the past three months, HRS has created nearly 48,000 tasks and over 500 projects in Asana and completed 246,000 core actions. Users like Justyna Kobierska work with the tool every day, on desktop and via the mobile app: “Thanks to Asana, I can manage the entire project portfolio more easily. I can see at a glance where there are obstacles, where action is needed, and where processes can be optimized.” The always up-to-date details in Asana also help her shorten regular project meetings and speed up weekly reporting to senior management.

Customer Delivery employees use Asana to keep track of all their tasks and deadlines, plan their daily work, and communicate with each other more easily. There are standardized but customizable templates for onboarding new major clients, so the wheel doesn't have to be reinvented over and over again. Overall, projects are easier to manage, and when suggestions for improvement arise, they are immediately recorded in Asana.

“We've achieved a truly structured way of working,” says Francis Berrie. “With Asana, it's easy to bring people together across a wide variety of projects and achieve shared success. We have created consistent internal standards and eliminated siloed solutions. This also contributes to stronger cross-departmental collaboration.”

From the portfolio overview, we can break down each project down to the task level, not only making processes 100% transparent, but also continuously improving them.

Francis Berrie

Director of Global Customer Delivery

With timeline view in Asana, HRS has now also started to optimize capacity planning for some teams across ongoing and planned projects.

HRS has saved about three months of time

Asana enables HRS to work much more productively. Using the comments feature alone saves HRS an estimated 42 working days per year; project templates and search functions save an additional 17 working days. Meetings are significantly shorter because all participants are already informed about the latest developments in their projects. Overall, the time saved can be estimated at around 13 weeks.

HRS has a lot more planned with Asana for the near future. On the one hand, the customer delivery staff in the three areas of Stay, Work, and Pay will work even more closely together to provide customers with a fully integrated onboarding experience. This consolidation is also to be reflected in the workflows in Asana; the fast-growing team wants to jointly define new best practices. On the other hand, HRS plans to actively use Asana, with its comprehensive project management features, to further develop the project management skills of its employees. Tests with Agile project management are also already underway.

The tool is alive. We are constantly learning because every new Asana user in our company also brings new ideas to the table.

Francis Berrie

Director of Global Customer Delivery

The number of users is also continuing to grow: Sales and Customer Service have already expressed interest in implementing Asana. In addition to the current interfaces with Jira, Zoom, Teams and SharePoint, a CRM integration and a ticketing system are also to be added. “We want to take advantage of all the possibilities that Asana offers,” explains Jochen Jaser. “Ultimately, the tool also helps us accelerate our digitalization. Constant change is part of our DNA at HRS.”