# How Aetna Achieved a 13x ROI with AI-Powered Portfolio Governance | Asana

> Learn how Aetna's Medicaid SPMO used Asana AI Studio to automate intake, prioritization, and risk reporting — generating $596,230 in value and reclaiming 468 hours annually in just four months.

Source: https://asana.com/case-study/aetna

## Aetna, a CVS Health Company, scales strategic governance with a 13x ROI using agentic workflows

Aetna, a CVS Health Company, eliminated manual bottlenecks in its Medicaid Strategic Project Management Office (SPMO) by deploying an AI-powered intake and execution engine. As the team quadrupled in size, the SPMO replaced manual Excel trackers and subjective triage with Asana AI Studio to automate prioritization and risk oversight. This transformation delivered a 13x ROI of $596,230 in just four months, enabling the team to absorb rising project volumes and maintain continuity through expansion without increasing headcount.

Challenges

**Manual intake bottlenecks:**Relied on Excel-based tracking, requiring constant context-switching and manual reconciliation that slowed throughput and made it difficult to maintain consistent, up-to-date project information.

**Subjective prioritization:**Portfolio routing often required extensive back-and-forth conversations to validate the rationale, resulting in delays in funding and resourcing.

**Reporting fatigue:**Logging a single, well-written risk or issue could take up to 40 minutes, leading to inconsistent visibility and leadership rework.

Solutions

**AI-powered decision support:**[AI Studio](/product/ai) interprets complex project charter data to support discovery, evaluation, and automated portfolio alignment.

**Automated RAID management:**The AI structures risk, issue, change, and decision (RAID) entries, drafting executive-ready mitigation language directly within the log.

**Smart status updates:**AI synthesizes execution data to draft concise, consistent [status updates](https://asana.com/guide/help/projects/progress)**.**

Outcomes

**3x ROI ($596,230)**generated in just four months through operational capacity cost avoidance and automation.

**$400,000 in operational capacity costs avoided**by enabling automation across intake, triage, staffing evaluation, portfolio governance, and status reporting.

**$140,000 in risk avoidance**enabled by improved early visibility and consistent mitigation through standardized RAID logging.

**468 hours reclaimed annually**for SPMO leadership by automating status reporting and reducing manual tasks by 90%.

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- [プロジェクト管理](/uses/project-management)

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医療

Enterprise 以上

- [AI スタジオ](/product/ai/ai-studio)

- [ポートフォリオ](/features/goals-reporting/portfolios)

- [ルール](/features/workflow-automation/rules)

### **Winner: 2026 Work Innovation Leader, AMER**

This award recognizes Aetna, a CVS Health Company, for its pioneering use of AI-powered workflows to modernize portfolio governance in a highly regulated healthcare environment. By embedding AI directly into the architecture of intake, prioritization, and risk management, Aetna has established a new enterprise benchmark for operational efficiency and execution discipline at scale.

The Medicaid SPMO’s partnership with Asana has been a catalyst for meaningful operational change. By embedding AI‑driven workflows into our intake, prioritization, and governance processes, the team has increased capacity, improved execution discipline, and delivered measurable business value in a highly regulated environment. Our transformation with Asana has allowed us to scale responsibly, support growing demand, and make better decisions faster without increasing organizational complexity. The results reflect both the power of the platform and the strength of the team leading this work.

### **Stage 1: Strategic intake and discovery**

Previously, the SPMO’s intake process relied on manual tools and context switching, making it difficult to maintain consistent information as project volume increased. They solved this by implementing an AI-enabled intake engine that ensures a standardized baseline before evaluation begins. By using AI to bridge the gap between raw request data and formal project charters, the team reduced the risk of misaligned investments and manual review bottlenecks.
- **Standardized baseline:**Every requester completes a formal project charter capturing scope, objectives, and risks before work can advance. 
- **AI-led call prep:**[AI Studio](/product/ai) reviews intake and charter data to create tailored discovery questions, helping project managers enter conversations with sharper prompts and reduce the need for follow-up meetings to clarify scope. 
- **Hybrid data model:**Select charter data is captured in Asana to support visibility, while a centralized spreadsheet preserves the evaluation rigor required for a regulated portfolio. This hybrid model preserves evaluation rigor while enabling downstream AI analysis. 
- **Intake evaluation and decision support:**AI Studio reviews intake data, supports routing decisions, and generates summaries with clear, documented rationale — with human judgment remaining central throughout.

The most transformative element is the AI’s ability to read project charter data from Excel and apply it across decision points like discovery and staffing. This shifted AI into a scalable decision-support engine that ensures we aren't constantly fixing things later.

### Stage 2: Prioritization and portfolio alignment

Portfolio routing and prioritization previously required extensive manual coordination and subjective
decision-making, slowing time to funding and execution. Aetna implemented [AI Studio](https://asana.com/product/ai) to standardize
how intakes map to enterprise goals and provide a documented rationale for portfolio assignment,
ensuring every project is governance-ready.
- **Connects work to strategic goals:**[AI Studio](https://asana.com/product/ai) automatically aligns every intake with the defined
company goals, ensuring consistent goal tracking across the portfolio and supports more
informed prioritization.
- **Portfolio validation and documentation:** AI checks the charter and intake record to validate
portfolio fit and produces a clear rationale to enable efficient board review and handoff.
- **Governance‐ready intake package:**AI prepares a governance‐ready intake package so the
initiative can move cleanly into funding review, resourcing, and execution.
- **Human-in-the-loop oversight:** All AI-generated insights and recommendations are reviewed
and validated by PMO leadership to ensure human judgment remains central.

We just needed intake and evaluation to be cleaner and more consistent. By using AI to apply consistent evaluation logic and justify portfolio alignment, we reduced back-and-forth and made it easier to get work ready for review without extra process.

### Stage 3: Execution, risk oversight, and reporting

Managing in-flight projects was formerly inconsistent, particularly for risk, issue, change, and decision
(RAID) tracking. Aetna replaced this administrative friction with an AI-augmented execution model that
standardizes how execution health is communicated. This ensures that leadership has timely visibility
into project health across the portfolio, reducing exposure to compliance issues and delivery delays.
- **Standardized RAID management:** AI helps structure RAID entries by generating clear,
executive-ready descriptions and mitigation language, making them easier to review and
escalate.
- **Phase summary automation:** [AI Studio](https://asana.com/product/ai) researches project updates and RAID data to create
consistent phase summaries, saving 468 hours annually.
- **Lowered barrier to entry:** Making RAID capture fast and consistent encourages teams to log
items early rather than avoiding the process altogether.
- **Clearer execution visibility:**Standardized reporting allows stakeholders to quickly understand
project health without relying on project-manager-specific interpretation.

If logging risks feel heavy, people won’t do it. The goal was to make RAID capture fast and consistent, so it becomes part of normal execution. By reusing that data to generate status summaries, we improved risk visibility without adding manual rework.

Before this transformation, the Aetna Medicaid SPMO relied on manual reconciliation and subjective routing to move complex initiatives through governance. By building an AI-powered intake and execution engine in Asana, the organization has shifted its culture from manual documentation to data-driven decision-making. As the team continues to scale and manage an increasingly complex Medicaid portfolio, its AI-augmented infrastructure ensures that governance rigor, regulatory compliance, and member impact grow together.

Aetna is a leading U.S. health insurance provider reaching millions of members through medical,
pharmacy, and government programs. The Medicaid SPMO drives strategic execution across local
markets and shared services, ensuring regulatory compliance and operational excellence.

### 誰もが活躍できる社会実現に向けて 先進フェムテック企業が見せる新しい価値創造を生み出す 働き方のベストプラクティス

### 三井住友信託銀行、Asana導入で組織文化を変革 属人化脱却とチーム協働の実現

### トップから現場まで変革を実感 年間470勤務日をAsanaで創出

### 時短と効率化でさらなる価値創造 自律する組織へ変革したフジテック