Meet the boundary-pushers, trailblazers, and visionaries redefining how we work

We hear incredible stories from customers all the time about how they’ve shaken up processes and revolutionized the way they work. From financial services to software-as-a-service, from healthcare to consumer goods and many more in between, you never cease to amaze us.

So when we launched our first ever Work Innovation Awards earlier this year, we were prepared to read some extraordinary submissions.

Well. You really raised the bar. 

We were blown away by the transformative work you’ve accomplished with Asana. Here are those stories:

Let’s start with Affirm, the financial services company. They are using Asana to modernize credit services with a lean team, collaborating across projects to save millions of dollars. Or Mount Tamalpais College, where streamlined workflows help their incarcerated students overcome physical, technological, and societal barriers to graduate and contribute meaningfully to their communities. Or the World Resources Institute, who gained 3,689 hours in just three months, allowing them to stay focused on protecting the environment for future generations. 

All of these organizations share a common thread: the pursuit of excellence through effective collaboration, next-level efficiency, and cutting-edge tools. This is just a small sample of their ingenuity and impact. 

Building a future-proof foundation

Whether it’s the economy, new technology, global supply chain issues, or cybersecurity threats, companies everywhere need to have a resilient digital foundation that can withstand the constant pace of change in our modern world. When everything is in one connected space, it’s easier to adapt as you scale.

Take Children’s Health: Making life better for kids for more than 110 years, they’ve transformed limited resources by streamlining their tech stack with Asana, saving each employee two hours’ worth of internal meetings every week. That’s 12 days a year per person!

A global leader in design and make software, Autodesk replaced multiple ad hoc solutions in favor of Asana, establishing a single source of truth across 10 different time zones. Global small business platform Xero reduced manual effort and increased productivity with Asana. And Disney Theatrical Group used Asana to centralize processes and minimize reliance on institutional knowledge, reducing the time it takes to complete tasks by two weeks. 

To rise to the challenge of multiple campaigns, GrubHub needed to unite their teams in one space: Simply preparing a campaign plan took hours of manual, error-prone labor, creating frustrating bottlenecks. With Asana, their marketing capacity is now “limitless”—plus, they can extract comprehensive insights to enhance workflows and increase the velocity of their growth campaigns. 

An independent ESG and corporate governance ratings firm, Morningstar has also tapped into Asana’s versatility, providing an agile foundation from which teams can grow—and increasing operational efficiency by 30%. They’ve even leveraged Asana with Trellis to reduce redundancies in their onboarding process by 50%, trimming ramp-up time from 8 months to 3 months.

Dentsu Queensland is part of Dentsu Group, a global marketing services network founded in 1901, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, and now present in over 145 countries. With a proven track record of championing innovation, dentsu Queensland’s adoption and use of Asana is no exception: Their specialty Tourism and Travel Team revamped operational management and effectiveness across Queensland, from Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef to the Gold Coast.

Peer-to-peer car sharing platform Turo reduced project cycle time from over 11 weeks to under 7, improving ROI and inspiring teams to turbo-charge their work from a central hub. 

Likewise in setting a new benchmark for operational excellence, the highly ranked New York University Stern School of Business shared how they use Asana to serve 6,000 students, 500 faculty members, and 300+ administrators across 30+ academic programs. 

Enabling businesses like these to turn challenges into opportunities for growth, a strong, integrated framework not only ensures agility in the face of change but also fosters long-term sustainability.

Setting teams up to take ownership and push boundaries

When you care about something, you want it done right. That’s why ownership is important: Employees who are invested in what they’re doing are more engaged, accountable, and eager to solve problems. When everyone’s working toward the same goal, the whole company is always ready to tackle challenges together.

In the medical device sector, Align Technology transformed their translation workflows with Asana, reducing request lead times by 59% and saving 483 workdays. That’s like getting a whole year back to refocus your teams on their goals.

At the NCAA, a global creative campaign—“Olympians & Paralympians Made Here”—had lofty ambitions to scale storytelling efforts fourfold compared to previous games. With Asana as their hub, they were able to bridge silos, optimize complex processes, and stay on schedule. Mid-project, they had already exceeded their expectations, with 2,770% more posts and 1,440% more impressions!

Then there’s Converse—you may be wearing a pair of their iconic sneakers right now. With Asana, they’re boosting creativity by tapping into global forecasting for the first time ever, which provides a scalable system from which they can track trends and optimize each season. And Beauty Pie, the world’s first “luxury beauty and wellness buyers’ club,” has standardized workflows and processes with Asana, reducing manual check-ins and automating busywork for an annual savings of $124,600 and 444 workdays.

Nuffield Department of Women's & Reproductive Health (NDWRH) set out a goal to improve organization between departments so they could focus on what really matters: providing high-quality, evidence-based women’s and reproductive healthcare. With Asana, they’ve saved 23 hours in the last 90 days due to automation—and have linked 57% of goals to Asana-supported work, inspiring team members to better understand the impact of their work and focus on high-value tasks.

By tracking their Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), a popular goal-setting framework, for approximately 120 KRs in Asana, jobs platform Indeed posted a 123% increase in time saved, reducing their time to deliver leadership reports from 1-2 weeks to 1-2 days. 

On the restaurant technology side of things, Toast has unified workflows with Asana, saving 136 hours a month on the education team alone. Working from 180 countries across marketing, web, and communications, the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) used Asana to achieve 100% visibility on creative projects, a 61% reduction in costs, and a 285% increase in project completion.

In Australia and New Zealand, retailer Woolworths Group operates 1,400 stores across various brands, and has achieved impressive results with Asana. One brand delivered a new store in less than 90 days utilizing asana; another managed 100+ team requests efficiently to achieve CAPEX and OPEX savings over two quarters; yet another reduced speed-to-market by 10% and cut alignment meetings by 50%.

When teams like these can take ownership of their time and creativity, they’re free to push boundaries in their respective industries and deliver exceptional experiences for customers.

Unlocking success with access to data

When data is siloed, teams are forced to rely on a few select gatekeepers, slowing down decisions and stifling innovation. But when everyone gains access to the insights they need, it’s easier to make better decisions faster, collaborate more smoothly, and spark new ideas. 

For Danish shipping and logistics company Mærsk, Asana serves as a centralized platform where all project-related data is stored and accessed, providing a single source of truth that enhances transparency, accountability, and data-driven decisions. Using Asana projects as a playbook, repository, and pipeline, everything they do is now quicker and sharper.

To amplify their impact on the community and ensure women receive the best possible care, Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest (PPPSW) used Asana to seamlessly upgrade and transition to a new Electronic Health Record (EHR) system (they’ve also enjoyed a 20% increase in workflow efficiency and 15% reduction in project completion time).

Not only did Bupa shave weekly meetings by 30%, they now use data to streamline quarterly and yearly reviews, provide valuable insights into communications performance, and enable teams to effectively refine their strategies. Meanwhile, teams at Oakley Capital saw a 34% increase in total time saved, equivalent to 28 work days annually—almost an entire month. Their vision includes using Asana’s AI capabilities to be even more agile, data-driven, and responsive. 

At Berklee College of Music, the Marketing Operations and Technology (MOPs) team is a model of high performance. In one instance, they transformed a tedious communication plan from 14 separate email requests built four times each year to one project template in Asana, leading to 25% more efficiency. In another, they successfully planned, strategized, built, and launched over 80 customer journeys for all 6 business units they support. They’re hoping to expand their Asana learnings to other teams across Berklee so they can continue to empower artists and creative leaders.

Revolutionizing brain health, Sage Therapeutics uses data from Asana to justify and advocate for headcount. They’ve also customized the platform to leverage a new demand planning process that frees their teams up to focus on life-changing medicine. 

By democratizing data like these companies, you can unlock time, improve workflows, and encourage continuous learning and adaptability.

While these companies are now making big waves and showing off some serious creativity, they all started small—with just one Asana project at a time. What made the difference? They figured out that working together, in a focused way, was key, and then they doubled down. Any team, no matter the size, can do the same thing. You don’t have to wait for the economy to improve or a new quarter to start. You can start collaborating better tomorrow—and see results fast.

→ How could we possibly choose who will win out of these trailblazers? Keep an eye out for the winners’ announcement at Asana’s Work Innovation Summit in New York on October 22, 2024, and on Asana's LinkedIn.