How Asana improved project visibility for a creative agency

It started when one of the creative team members, feeling the growing frustration, asked a simple question: “How do we get control over all this work?”.

What followed was a full transformation of how fast-moving creative team collaborated, planned and communicated. This blog takes you inside that journey describing the challenges they faced, the solutions we build, and how Asana helped bring it all together. 

Inside the creative agency's reality before Asana

They were a fast-growing in-house creative agency, working with some of the world’s most ambitious brands and operating as a compact team of around twenty people. Their departments included marketing, creative, operations and sales, and they were all driven by the same belief that great work starts with strong ideas and high standards.

Their days were packed with campaigns to launch, content calendars to plan, events underway, and influencer collaborations waiting for approval. At any given moment there were around 20 different size projects moving at the same time, each with its own deadlines and dependencies.

But as the workload increased, the inefficiencies in the way they worked became more noticeable.

Someone from creative team would jump into a task only to later discover the marketing team was already doing the same thing. A production believed an event concept was ready to go, while the brand team still thought it was in early development. Spreadsheets circulated in different versions, none of them matching. Requests arrived everywhere from Slack pings, emails, comments in decks and “Hey, quick question…” during lunch. 

It was the creative operations manager who began to notice the pattern most clearly: the more the team tried to keep up, the more their tools and processes held them back. As the pressure increased, the same questions kept resurfacing:

• Who was actually handling this?
• Why were updates different depending on who you asked?
• And how were two teams still ending up doing the same task?

That’s when he started looking for solutions and reached out to us.

“We’re trying our best to stay in sync, but the way we work right now is working against us. We need something that actually helps us stay on top of things and can grow with us”

Challenges holding the team back and the goals for the Asana setup

During our initial conversations, it became clear that the team was struggling with a combination of challenges. And as we talked through their day-to-day reality, a clear picture started to form of what they wanted to change and what they hoped to achieve with Asana.

Efficiency
A lot of time was being lost simply trying to figure out where things stood. Information lived in spreadsheets, messages, and separate tools, which meant the team spent a lot of time checking updates or asking for the latest version of something.

Accountability and ownership
Ownership wasn’t always clear for every task, which often led to double work. Sometimes both the marketing and production teams would start working on the same deliverable without realising it, while other tasks slowed down because no one was sure who was supposed to take the lead.

Resource planning
The team was getting busier, but they didn’t have a clear view of who had capacity and who was overloaded. Some team members were stretched too thin while others had room to help, simply because the overview wasn’t there.

A work management system that could scale
The way they were working simply wasn’t working anymore, and the team knew something had to change. They also understood that their needs today wouldn’t be the same a year from now. As the agency continued to grow and take on more complex projects, they needed a work management system that could adapt with them - not one they would outgrow again in a few months.

Budget tracking
Tracking budgets and hours was another challenge. It wasn’t always easy to see how much an event or campaign actually cost, or how many hours went into a project. Information was spread across different places, and small details often went missing.

How we built the team's new workflow in Asana

Once we had a clear understanding of their challenges and goals, we moved into the implementation phase. The team was completely new to Asana and didn’t have a fixed idea of how it should be set up. So our first step was to guide them through the possibilities and help translate their workflows into something structured and workable. They preferred to keep things simple in the beginning, using Asana in its starting-point form without automations or complex custom fields. Our approach was to meet them where they were, focusing on clarity and structure first, rather than overwhelming them with features.

We began with a discovery session to map out how projects currently moved through the agency - from the first brief to final delivery. After walking through several examples, it became clear that most of their projects followed a similar sequence of phases. The goal then became to build a flexible project template that could adapt to different levels of complexity or scope.

We built a master template that covered all the core steps of a creative project (visual identity, branding, marketing plans, content, events, production, influencer work, and more). Everything was included from the start and project managers could just delete the sections they didn’t need. This gave the team clarity and consistency without limiting their creativity.

At the same time, we worked closely with them to define milestones, handoff points, and ownership. Each phase included clear responsibilities, making it much easier to see who needed to act, when things needed to move forward, and where potential bottlenecks might appear.

We also shared our knowledge on sustainable ways of organising work in Asana. This meant shifting from a task-subtask setup to a clearer project-task structure. Alongside this, we set up portfolios, so the team could finally see an overview of everything happening across the agency, something they were previously missing.

We also helped them set up a space for tracking budgets and costs. For the first time, they had a place to record event spend, campaign budgets and the hours invested into each project. This alone gave them far more visibility than before. And now, with Asana rolling out its new timesheets and budgets add-on, that visibility will only get stronger.

New Asana add-on: Timesheets and Budgets

With project budgets, the team will be able to set a budget for each project in either hours or cost and track it throughout the entire project lifecycle. Because budgets are connected to capacity planning, tasks, and timesheets, they’ll finally have a clear, visual overview of the financial health of every project.

Team members will also be able to log their hours directly in Asana, making it easy to compare planned time versus actual time and spot early when projects are going over budget or need additional resources.

For a creative agency managing multiple projects at once, this will create a far more accurate picture of how time and money are being used across the team and will support better planning and decision-making.

The impact: what changed once the team started using Asana

The impact of the Asana setup became visible quickly. With clearer structure and ownership, overlaps dropped and it became much easier to know who was responsible for what.

Project progress also became far more transparent. Instead of relying on messages or chasing updates, everyone could now see the status of each task and discuss details directly in the task comments. Timelines became more predictable, and bottlenecks were easier to spot early. Portfolios provided a reliable overview of everything happening across the agency, giving everyone the clarity they had never had before. Their new templates offered a solid foundation that kept projects consistent while remaining flexible for different types of work.

And as the team grows more comfortable with Asana, they can continue adding  features such as custom fields or automations whenever new needs rises. And it doesn’t stop there - Asana’s AI capabilities open up even more possibilities.

The power of starting simple in Asana

One thing this implementation really confirmed for us is that there’s no need to overcomplicate an Asana environment.

"The most effective setups are the ones that match the team’s current level of experience"

If a team is just starting out, we begin with the basics: a clear structure, simple templates and a setup they can feel confident using from day one. And often, that beginning alone creates a significant impact on the way the team works. As their confidence grows, we gradually introduce more advanced features. But if a team is already coming from another work management system and wants to recreate or elevate a more advanced workflow, we meet them there too. 

The transformation that happens not only in processes, but also in people

What we often see with new implementations is that there’s naturally some hesitation from individuals. Changing the way you work isn’t easy, and it’s normal for people to wonder whether a new system will truly help. But as the process unfolds, many begin to see the benefits - and some even become what we call “Asana champions”. This implementation was no different.

Today, the team has someone who drives their success in Asana: the person who keeps the system up to date, supports colleagues, and advocates for using Asana to its full potential. These individuals quickly realise that the more you put into Asana, the better it serves you and their enthusiasm helps the whole team continue using the tool in a consistent, meaningful way.

This use case is one of many examples of how we support organisations and teams in creating more structured, efficient, and scalable ways of working.

If you’d like to see how we can help your team achieve similar results, you can easily book a call by pressing the “Get started” button below.