Interactive bolsters project delivery with Asana integrations

Highlights

Challenge

• Interactive’s cloud business operations team previously used Excel spreadsheets to track customer sales through to project delivery and service management, resulting in a lack of visibility and labour-intensive processes that could impact delivery times and consistency.

• The Excel spreadsheets at the centre of the cloud team’s project management processes often had a single owner, making it difficult for other team members to access and see, limiting team-wide visibility and impacting the speed and accuracy of weekly reporting.

• Previously, when the Interactive product team created a new product or service and handed it over to the project team to deliver, it wasn’t always immediately clear how to onboard it, due to a lack of cross-team documentation and process management.

Solution

• The Interactive cloud business operations team adopted Asana and integrated it with systems used by other departments to consolidate project information, providing team-wide visibility and enabling more consistent delivery.

• Using Asana’s reporting dashboards, the operations team gained the team-wide visibility needed to create detailed, up-to-date and accurate reports quickly. Reporting has been further accelerated with Asana’s AI features, including Smart status and Smart summaries.

• Interactive’s product team used Asana’s project plan templates to create onboarding guides and workflows for new products and services that were handed over to the cloud business operations team for implementation and delivery, streamlining the process.

Outcome

• Asana’s integration with existing systems has provided greater visibility for the cloud business operations team, making it easier to track and manage new sales through to delivery, which has led to more consistent project delivery and a higher delivery success rate.

• With Asana’s dashboards providing project visibility across the entire operations team, weekly reporting is faster and more accurate. Moreover, Asana’s smart AI reporting features save project managers one to two hours each week on weekly reporting tasks.

• Thanks to Asana’s project plan templates, it’s easy for Interactive’s cloud business operations team to seamlessly onboard a new product or service from the product team, reducing the chances of missed revenue from delayed implementations.

Implementing Asana has enhanced our already customer-first approach by providing a more consistent delivery method. The reporting features drive transparency, keeping our customers informed and engaged. As a result, our customer satisfaction has significantly improved.”

More visibility for faster reporting

Excel spreadsheets were previously at the centre of the Interactive cloud business unit operations team’s project management processes. But these often had a single owner, making it difficult for other team members to access and limiting the visibility needed for accurate weekly reporting.

Using Asana’s dashboards, the operations team now has visibility of every project in progress, making weekly reporting faster and more accurate, leading to happier customers. Additionally, Asana’s smart AI reporting features save project managers one to two hours each week on weekly reporting tasks. 

Benefits gained:

• One to two hours saved each week on weekly reporting tasks due to team-wide insight and AI tools

• Greater accuracy for project reports thanks to more up-to-date information

• More predictable financial forecasts for projects thanks to greater visibility

• Customer expectations managed more efficiently with greater clarity

We manage the speed of project onboarding and predicting when a new project would generate revenue used to be challenging. Now, with Asana, it’s highly predictable. We can accurately forecast budget and revenue for any given month. This is made possible through the integration between Asana and our Sales and Revenue Management System, providing real-time project updates directly within Asana. It has significantly improved clarity.”

Securing greater project consistency

The operations team within Interactive’s cloud business primarily used Excel spreadsheets to track and transition new customer projects from the sales department through to delivery and ongoing service management, resulting in a lack of visibility and consistency across teams.

Interactive integrated Asana with the sales team's platform, providing the cloud business operations team with complete visibility into projects and ensuring a smoother handover to delivery. This resulted in a higher success rate for project delivery and more consistent services for customers. 

Benefits gained:

• A more seamless transition of projects from sales to operations

• Greater accountability thanks to cross-team visibility and collaboration

• More consistency in project and service delivery for customers

• Fewer project delivery disruptions, leading to happier customers

With Asana, we now have a more consistent delivery approach. Previously, we lacked a streamlined way to track projects from start to finish once they were passed to the operations team. Now, we can ensure that every project is on track and deadlines are met without missing any details.”

Powering up product onboarding

Previously, when a new product or service created by Interactive’s product team was delivered to the cloud business’s operations team to be rolled out, the onboarding process was difficult due to the lack of cross-team documentation and collaboration channels to facilitate the onboarding process.

Now, Asana project plan templates are used to create onboarding guides and workflows for new products and services, with instructions that can be refined collaboratively to ensure a more seamless onboarding process that results in fewer technical issues when products are rolled out.

 Benefits gained:

• A more seamless, streamline and efficient product onboarding process

• Fewer disruptions to new product and services upon rollout

• Faster new product and service implementation

• Fewer chances of missed revenue due to deployment delays

Previously, when we created a new product or service, the onboarding process could be unclear. Now, our product team develops each new offering and creates a detailed Asana template with comprehensive onboarding instructions. This ensures that all relevant templates are consolidated into a well-organised project plan, streamlining the transition to operations.”

Getting better at goal setting with Asana

Now that Asana has helped Interactive transform the project management processes powering project delivery for its cloud business operations team while clearing up cross-team collaboration, it is set to tap Asana Goals to make sure everyone is aligned in their respective objectives through an objectives and key results (OKRs) framework aimed at driving performance across the organisation.