Looking for advice: Is Asana still the right fit for our small team?

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1

Hi everyone,

We’re a small manufacturing company with only four employees, and we’ve been using Asana for quite a while. Overall, we really like the platform, but we’re starting to question whether we’re using it the way it was intended and whether it’s still the best long-term fit for us.

We recently migrated almost our entire technology stack to Microsoft 365 (Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, etc.), so we’re wondering if it would make more sense to use Microsoft Planner/Tasks instead of maintaining Asana as an additional platform.

Here’s how we currently use Asana:

1. Our customer journey workflow

We’ve built a customer journey process where every new customer request enters Asana and moves through different stages of our business, such as:

  • Incoming requests
  • Quotes
  • Production / Assembly
  • Delivery
  • Invoicing
  • Customer follow-up

This part works fairly well and helps us make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

2. Company knowledge and internal organization

This is where we’re less certain.

Over time, we’ve created many portfolios and projects that act more like a knowledge base than project management. We use them for:

  • Meeting notes
  • SOPs and procedures
  • Ideas
  • Department notes
  • Improvement projects
  • Things we don’t want to forget
  • General task lists

In other words, we’ve gradually turned Asana into both a task manager and a company notebook.

What we DON’T really use

We don’t manage highly complex projects.
We rarely use:

  • Task dependencies
  • Advanced workload management
  • Complex project scheduling
  • Portfolio reporting for executives

Most of our needs are simply:

  • Assign tasks
  • Track progress
  • Make sure nothing gets forgotten
  • Keep information organized

Our question

Since we’re already heavily invested in Microsoft 365, do you think Asana is still the best platform for a team of only four people?

Would you continue using Asana, or would you move knowledge management to OneNote/SharePoint and task management to Microsoft Planner or Tasks?

Has anyone here made that transition?

Looking back, would you structure things differently if you were starting over today?

I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have managed both Asana and the Microsoft ecosystem, especially in a small business.

Thank you!

Francis Labonte

2

Hi @Francis_Labonte , welcome to the forum!

I believe Asana’s superpower lies in the workflow, as you’re already aware.

While I can understand wanting to migrate your company knowledge over to something like OneDrive, I don’t think it’s necessary to use every bell and whistle Asana has to offer in order to justify keeping it.

Change will always come at a cost, and if you decide to switch, even in part, you’re going to experience some level of disruption, whether that’s migrating data, rebuilding processes, or adjusting established habits.

Only you and your team will be able to say if that cost is worth it.

FWIW, we are heavily dependent on 365 where I work as well, and just switched from Asana Advanced to Enterprise.

3

Welcome @Francis_Labonte!

I have a pretty firm opinion about this.

For Work management

I wouldn’t wish Microsoft Planner onto my worst enemies.

I’ve tried it, and in my opinion, Asana is a is a superior product by far. Planner is rigid and limited, where I feel Asana can be made to fit almost any workflow. Maybe it’s improved since I last used it, but Microsoft’s tendency to do design by committee doesn’t give me much confidence it has.

Tasks is just a to-do list. No collaboration. A company needs a work management system.

For knowledge management

Knowledge management is a different beast. I hear people being happy with OneNote, though I’m more a fan of Obsidian myself.

Asana is making steps towards making it more suitable for knowledge management with the latest developments on the Notes feature. It’s not nearly as fit as Obsidian I’d say, but there is a benefit in having everything in the same system. Especially with recent improvements in referencing options.

SharePoint and OneDrive are solid for document management, though I wouldn’t confuse that with knowledge management.

Asana as intended

I’d be happy to take a look. Being a mechanical engineer I’m familiar with manufacturing. :slight_smile:
Let me know and I’ll DM you a calendly link. No charge.

4

I agree with the explanations given by others.

I’d like to add a few words.

  • Word and Excel have vastly different uses compared to Teams and Planner. While O365 boasts convenient integration, even with this integration, each (Teams and Planner) still exists as a separate application. (The same could be said for Google Workspace.)
  • Asana is primarily for task (To-Do) management, with projects, timelines, and pages all running on the same application.

In my personal opinion,
For individuals or small teams managing daily tasks, I believe the key is to effectively manage tasks (To-Dos). Therefore, I think Asana is suitable.
Of course, Word is convenient for creating documents for others, and Excel is convenient for managing expenses and inventory, so you should use those. And for external communication, email and chat are also necessary.