Diving into Asana’s ROI of Work Management Report

In unprecedented times, how can organizations use technology to achieve continuity and clarity? It’s a question that countless organizations around the world are asking themselves today.

We believe that the solution lies with work management platforms. They allow everyone to do their best work and enable businesses to flourish. But with economies and individual organizations under extreme pressure, we need facts to prove work management platforms are a vital part of the modern tech stack.

That’s why Asana partnered with Sapio Research to analyze the behavior and attitudes of more than 3,000 knowledge workers from Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US who currently use work management platforms.

Fundamentally, we wanted to understand the impact and return on investment of work management platforms. To do so, we took a holistic view of both the role work management platforms play within organizations and the return on investment they provide.

What does the ROI of work management look like?

Our survey found that after the first 30 days of using a work management platform, users are likely to see an increase in their own, their team’s, and their organization’s productivity. Over time, the benefits keep growing: on average, 29% of respondents said that a work management platform helps save costs in the long run, and the number rises to 39% for those who have used one for 5 years or more.

What does that return on investment look like? Here are a few key statistics from our report that illustrate how a work management platform has helped organizations around the world:

• 87% of respondents see a direct correlation between using a work management platform and improved productivity.

• 86% of respondents say work management platforms improve clarity on goals and the impact that their work has, boosting individual, team, and organizational engagement.

• 64% of users say they wouldn’t be able to do their job without a work management platform, with 77% of Asana users sharing this sentiment. Once in use, work management platforms become an essential tool.

The gains in productivity are all the more interesting when you consider the barriers to efficiency that workers in each country face:

• Australia: Time wasted on meetings or admin (32%)

• France: A lack of alignment and time wasted on meetings or admin (27%)

• Germany: Poor communication (26%)

• Japan: Poor communication (28%)

• UK: Too many apps/tools to get work done (25%)

• US: Overworked employees (30%)

Although there is overlap, the causes for lost efficiency vary quite a bit between countries. Yet, gobally, the overwhelming majority of respondents find work management platforms to be a game changer. What this suggests is that many different problems and barriers to efficiency are solvable with a work management platform in place.

How Autodesk’s Customer Events team became 50% more effective with Asana

As powerful as those numbers are, it is hard to visualize what a work management platform looks like in practice if you’ve never used one before. The Customer Events team at Autodesk is a great example that highlights the benefits of work management.

Autodesk creates software for people who make things—from skyscrapers to high-performance cars to smartphones. With a work management platform, the Customer Events team has been able to reduce email and streamline manual work.

In total, by managing work in Asana, the team has reduced internal email use by 75%. They also estimate that the centralization of plans, deadlines, and information in one place has made them 50% more effective. Those numbers are nothing to sniff at.

Streamline your work with work management

Autodesk demonstrates how organizations that adopt a work management platform find it transformational—and their story aligns well with what we found. From our report, we discovered that, globally, 40% of respondents see their teams working more efficiently together. Meanwhile, monotonous low-impact work—like staying on top of a never-ending inbox—plummets, with 71% saying less time is spent going back and forth on email.

The collaborative benefits of a work management platform are essential in a world of increasingly distributed and remote work. Often, when teams are spread out across various locations, silos can occur and leave businesses spending more time on admin and processes, like chasing status updates, rather than deep, meaningful work.

With a work management platform, not only do businesses benefit from more time spent executing impactful work on an individual level, but 81% also see an improvement in team collaboration. It is a win-win for everyone.

To learn more about how work management platforms impact efficiency and help teams achieve goals, download the full report.