FOCUS Bikes: Maximum acceleration with Asana

Asana is the ideal platform for surviving in an agile market”

At FOCUS Bikes, cycling is a top priority. The performance bike manufacturer offers mountain bikes, road bikes, e-bikes, and pure bikes for every type of cyclist. However, FOCUS Bikes also relies internally on an agile and flexible way of working. FOCUS Bikes relies on the Asana Work Management System as the essential basis for Work Management.

The Pon.Bike Group is all about bikes. FOCUS Bikes is a subsidiary of the Amsterdam-based Pon.Bike Group, one of the five largest bicycle manufacturers in the world. The Pon.Bike Group in turn belongs to the Dutch conglomerate Pon Holdings, with a total of around 12,000 employees. An additional 10 bicycle manufacturers are also part of the group, including Gazelle, Cervèlo, Santa Cruz, Kalkhoff, and Urban Arrow, based in Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia. There are also other locations in Asia, plus the production and assembly plant in Cloppenburg.

Within the PON.Bike Group, each brand develops, produces, and markets its products independently. However, the various brands take great advantage of their combined strengths and experience in an internal synergy network.

In Stuttgart, the headquarters of the FOCUS Bikes brand, around 150 employees keep the core business of racing bikes and e-bikes moving. The bikes are marketed under the slogan "Ride beyond Ride together."  Internally, Development, Product Management, Marketing, Sales, and Production divisions interact with all other locations across borders. Every employee who has anything to do with FOCUS Bikes is involved in fast, fluid work processes via Asana. In addition, 100 external partners such as suppliers and agencies are also integrated into the Work Management System.

Asana: the missing link in the workflow chain

When Patrick Lenkner joined FOCUS Bikes in 2017, the company network was still working with a wide variety of tools—including emails, Skype, Excel spreadsheets, data-storage servers, and Basecamp, which often proved to be quite error-prone. When employees were on vacation, important documents could not be accessed and the next work steps were simply noted down on handwritten to-do lists. One of Patrick Lenkner's first tasks was to set up a functioning and transparent Work Management System, so he set out to search for a solution that could meet all the user group's requirements. Teams needed to be able to customize the functions as required in order to set up a suitable workflow. At the same time, the tool had to be able to delve into work processes in-depth. Different views, lists, boards, and timelines had to be customizable for each project, workflow, and department. Integration with Google Workspace was also crucial, as FOCUS Bikes now mainly works with Google Apps. For the collaboration with China, a tool was required that would enable access from there. And, of course, the enormous safety requirements of the higher-level Pon Group also had to be guaranteed.

First, Patrick Lenkner and his supervisor Ben Gerold from the Engineering team worked with the IT department to examine several tools in detail. They were searching for a tool that could truly cover all the requirements so that no additional tool with other functions would have to be laboriously integrated later. The Asana platform's straightforward design and the high fun factor when using it quickly caught their attention. But Asana offered much more. A detailed overview of timelines, clear lists and structured board views clearly met the desired requirements.

During the onboarding, there were employees who insisted on working exclusively with Asana from now on”

Patrick Lenkner and Ben Gerold were extremely impressed by Asana's high level of user-friendliness and wide range of options. 2018 brought the onboarding of Asana—initially only in the Engineering department.

The 15 members of the engineering team were soon using the tool for all of their department's Work Management. From there, enthusiasm quickly spread to other departments thanks to Pon Bikes' synergy culture. It even went as far as some employees being unwilling to return to their old way of working after their initial experiences with Asana. As a result, an increasing number of colleagues were gradually brought on board at their own request, which has made working methods much more efficient. The best thing was that the employees also had a lot of fun. Nevertheless, the onboarding was well thought out, and Patrick Lenkner eventually became an Asana Ambassador. He advertised internally, dispelled doubts, and offered training and periodical Q&A sessions. Consistently adhering to the new practices and periodically receiving feedback were particularly helpful in learning the new practices. As a result, ambiguities and concerns were resolved, but successes and ideas were also periodically communicated.

Today, the engineering team is considered to be the origin and responsible for the propagation of Asana at FOCUS Bikes. Statements like "Nothing falls through anymore—there are far fewer bugs than before" impressed the employees during the rollout phase. Losing track of seemingly endless loops of emails quickly became a thing of the past, and the convenience of clicking a "like" button is always enjoyable.

From 2018 to 2020, all functions were brought into Google Workspace and Asana. Emails became much less important, and today all links to Google Drive files and channels are stored centrally in Asana. Everything was geared toward a shared office setup, and FOCUS Bikes networked with all locations and partners via Asana—whether in Cloppenburg or Asia. Within the Pon.Bike Group, FOCUS Bikes is the great role model with its Asana integration. Other brands are also getting started and want to integrate Asana into their workstreams. In addition to FOCUS Bikes, the tool is currently in use at the Derby Cycle production plant and at Kalkhoff. Gazelle and Pon. Automotive have also already expressed an interest.

The more employees work with Asana, the more fun it is and the better it functions. All employees should be brought on board”

Asana is involved in all projects and workflows

Asana supports all aspects of a project, be it in SCRUM workflows, in team meetings, in reporting, from brainstorming and pricing to series production. Since its implementation, FOCUS Bikes has benefited from greater transparency and improved throughput times, higher productivity, fewer misunderstandings, and a significantly lower error rate.

When all employees were instructed to work from home in March 2020 due to the pandemic, the switch to Asana meant FOCUS Bikes was already well prepared. Employees simply closed their laptops, went home, and carried on working seamlessly—right where they had left off in the office. "Thanks to Asana, the situation was relatively stress-free," Patrick Lenkner says. "Employees were proud of the progressive and location-independent way of working."

It was as if we had known the pandemic would come and force us to work remotely, and were able to prepare for it a year and a half in advance. Our timing was perfect”

From development right to the assembly line with Asana

Due to the group's structure, there is an interface to Industrial Engineering in the Derby Cycle production and assembly plant. This is where the developments submitted by FOCUS Bikes are processed before being sent to the assembly line. Asana is an important part of this working process. First, a "pilot bike" is built. This reveals all the challenges involved in preparing for series production. The organization of the pilot bike, the recording of all possible obstacles, and the processing take place entirely in Asana. This is a big step in which Asana helps to transfer the results of office work directly into production. The end result is the ready-to-use bike. Incidentally, one of the first bikes produced with Asana using industrial engineering was bought by an Asana employee.

Asana is like business social media. It works like Instagram and this is where we do our projects now. It's really cool”

FOCUS Bikes wins the race in the bicycle market with Asana

When Asana was onboarded at FOCUS Bikes, the team consisted of 30 employees. However, due to the booming demand for bicycles, FOCUS Bikes has gone through a typical startup growth phase. After just two years, today it employs 150 employees. Contact with other Pon.Bike companies has also intensified. This enormous growth phase was driven by Asana from the very beginning.

The bicycle market is experiencing an enormous boom, turning the simple bicycle into more and more of a lifestyle product. FOCUS Bikes is ambitious when it comes to using agile Work Management to develop and launch the right bike for the customer as quickly as possible. For example, if a new e-bike technology is available in April, FOCUS Bikes wants to launch these bikes on the market in May at the latest, not a year later. The right bike—at the right quality—needs to come on the market at the right time. This is where FOCUS Bikes lives up to its self-proclaimed mantra "Right Bike. Right Time. Right Quality." This extremely agile workflow is massively supported by Asana and underpins FOCUS Bikes' success.

Asana supports FOCUS Bikes in a rapidly changing market

Patrick Lenkner sees more enormous challenges coming up for the industry. On the one hand, there was the accident in the Suez Canal: air-freight traffic was already restricted, plus the other damaging effects from the pandemic, and not just on the economy. With usual supply chains no longer intact, delivery times for certain bicycle parts were made much longer.

On the other hand, demand for bicycles is high around the world and continues to rise. The reasons behind the increase in demand are complex. Many countries are implementing alternative transport concepts and investing in strategies like expanding cycling infrastructure, which has made cycling extremely attractive. An increasing number of people are using e-bikes as a cost-effective and environmentally friendly alternative to cars or public transport. The "mobility revolution" is on everyone's lips. As the tech sector finds its way into bicycle production and technology leaps forward increasingly often, innovation cycles are growing ever shorter. The wheel is literally being reinvented, more and more often. Agile and extremely forward-looking planning is required to survive in this environment. Asana is an ideal platform for meeting these requirements.

Asana is at least as much fun as cycling itself

The young team at FOCUS Bikes has its own spirit. They have the most fun bringing the right bike onto the market and also going for rides together. The following Asana functions have been particularly popular and in constant use since the rollout:

• My Tasks: This enables everyone to manage their personal to-dos independently across numerous projects.

• Portfolio and dashboards: To maintain an overview of numerous projects.

• Xtra delight: As soon as a task is completed, thumbs-up and unicorns fly through the screen.

Looking back, what could have been done differently?

Certainly a great deal. But Patrick Lenkner would handle the rollout of Asana the same way today as he did three years ago. "It was absolutely perfect not to onboard it to the whole company straight away. We managed to get the tool running smoothly in just one department. That's fun." A top-down rollout of Asana would have had a different result. Valuable time would have been lost getting to grips with the tool and learning all the hacks and tricks. Thanks to the gradual, voluntary onboarding, Asana was able to grow organically into 

FOCUS Bikes' Work Management. Patrick Lenkner's hot tip for an Asana rollout is:

Get started quickly! Gain experience quickly! And adapt Asana to your individual needs!”