Viessmann develops climate solutions for the future with Asana

From heating manufacturer to modern technology leader, change has been a constant for Viessmann over the past 100+ years. The family-owned company has transformed itself into a global provider of climate control solutions for living spaces, and are focused on developing and implementing intelligent, sustainable energy systems and cooling solutions for their residential, industrial, and commercial customers.  

Headquartered in Germany, Viessmann now has more than 12,750 employees across 74 countries, and generated 2.8 billion Euros revenue in 2020. They’re enthusiastic about innovation and keep a close eye on technical and business trends to stay competitive and meet the changing needs of the market. 

Creating a digital workplace for the future

Over the past four generations, Viessmann has been led by forward-looking entrepreneurs who have driven the company’s continued growth. Current CEO Maximilian (Max) Viessmann joined the company in 2015, and began the next phase of the company’s journey: a focus on digital transformation.

Max set out to digitize both the company's product range and internal work processes. He handed the responsibility of planning and implementing their new digital workplace to Alexander Poellmann, the company’s Smart Office and Collaboration Manager at the time. 

With Max’s directive, Alex and his team set out to find a simple, intuitive work management platform that all employees could use to collaborate more effectively. Their search led them to Asana. They chose the platform because it would give all employees visibility into their corporate strategy—from the overarching vision to specific goals and individual tasks—which aligns with Viessmann’s culture of transparency. Asana is also easy to use so the team felt confident employees would adopt it, no matter their working style. Lastly, it can be accessed whenever and wherever via the web and mobile app, providing the flexibility needed to collaborate across locations and while working remotely.

With Asana, we have made the digital workplace a reality”

The first departments to adopt Asana were the teams responsible for the digital transformation of the company, IT, and Research and Development, and then it was rolled out to the rest of the company. Now Asana is the standard platform for implementing strategic goals, managing cross-departmental projects, and ensuring standardized workflows across Viessmann. They’ve completely integrated the platform into their operations. For example, Asana is used to manage the entire product development process, from concept to market launch.

A key to the successful adoption of Asana at Viessmann has been the 50 ‘Asana Heroes’—the first point of contact for questions from colleagues and whose jobs involve actively optimizing and scaling the software. They are experts in mapping Viessmann processes in Asana and are responsible for accelerating the widespread use of new functions and capabilities quickly. The Heroes work closely with their Asana Customer Success Manager, who provides insights and updates about new features and functionality as it’s launched.

Getting the most out of this new way of working

To complement Asana, Viessmann also implemented Google Workspace for communication, file sharing, and collaboration. Tight integration between Asana and Google Workspace enables employees to create Asana tasks directly from their Gmail inbox, plan their work in Google Calendar, and link Google Drive files to projects. This ensures it’s always easy to find and access information.

Everything is as transparent as possible in Asana. It’s clear where we want to go, what we have to do, and which milestones are relevant.”

Viessmann uses Asana in almost all of its subsidiaries, so team members across the company can work together seamlessly. As they acquire new companies, the new employees are invited to Asana so they can begin collaborating with their colleagues right away. And given the global nature of their business, employees can coordinate projects across time zones, teams and locations in Asana, plus set realistic milestones and pursue common goals.

Some of the ways they’re using Asana include:

• Executive communication: Leadership captures the most important parts of the company strategy in an Asana project, including high-priority product and organizational changes. As work kicks off, all updates are shared with followers of these initiatives, allowing them to proactively comment, raise questions, and engage with the work. 

• Team collaboration: Information used to be siloed by teams, but as Viessmann incorporates agile methodologies, employees need to be able to share information cross-functionally. Asana enables people on different teams and functions to collaborate and share information within projects that are accessible to everyone. 

• Internal request management: Many teams, from marketing to quality management to production-related functions, use Asana to manage their incoming requests. Employees now complete an Asana Form to submit new requests, which creates a task in the team’s project. This ensures the team receives the information they need upfront, and all requests are centralized in one place so they can manage their workloads. Additionally, employees can track the progress of their request, and teams use Rules to automate steps in the fulfillment process. This increased transparency between requesters and teams has improved process efficiency and productivity.

Managing their work in Asana has provided an enormous competitive advantage for Viessmann, especially since the beginning of COVID-19 in 2020. Processes continued to run, regardless of location, which provided valuable stability during a time of major disruption for employees mandated to work from home. The number of daily actions taken by employees in Asana more than tripled during this time—from around 100,000 in September 2019 to approximately 350,000 today.

Continually optimizing processes with Asana

With Asana, Viessmann has improved alignment across teams so they’re able to be more agile, move faster, and proactively respond to changing market needs—and create more value for their customers.

Viessmann also credits Asana for helping significantly increase corporate transparency. By linking corporate strategy with the operational work in a place everyone has access to, corporate goals and responsibilities are clear to all. Furthermore, this helps employees better prioritize their tasks and see how their work contributes to the company’s corporate vision. Asana also helps make Viessmann a more attractive employer for young talent—a clear competitive advantage in times when there is a shortage of skilled workers.

We want to inspire the young talent in our company with innovative software.”

Overall, Viessmann recognizes how Asana has significantly increased efficiency. The company executes projects faster, duplication of work is avoided, and bureaucracy is reduced. Asana also makes it easier to engage additional resources on projects, helping avoid delays and achieve deadlines, which has led to faster development cycles and increases in productivity.

What's next at Viessmann?

The operating efficiencies and transparency created by Asana have enabled Viessmann to face the new opportunities of our time—like sustainability—with the combined force of a global team. They are intensifying their efforts to achieve "Net Zero" carbon emissions, a goal Viessmann plans to achieve by continuing to develop innovative and sustainable solutions for climate protection. And this is all tightly aligned with their vision for the future: of benefiting the environment and providing opportunities for future generations.

With Asana, we're exactly where we want to be in project management.”