Allianz Partners saves over $1 million in potential outside agency fees with Workfront.

Allianz Partners needed to replace a discontinued tool used by non-marketing departments to make work ticket requests of Creative and Compliance team members. With work coming from everywhere, small but growing teams sought to provide visibility into all requests, better manage deadlines, increase collaboration, and simplify communication. A workflow solution was needed by the end of 2014 to help prioritize the work to make it more manageable because the organization was expanding fast.

Allianz Partners quickly designed and implemented a creative project request replacement solution in Adobe Workfront. Soon after, other teams realized how expeditious and efficient the tool was and they wanted to use it for similar tasks such as: a request queue, a view for all work requests across teams and departments, and the ability to prioritize work to ensure production in the most timely and efficient manner. It didn’t take long before individual team goals grew into enterprise-level realizations.

2015 — The implementation of Adobe Workfront focused on the growing of both the Creative and Compliance teams. The organization consolidated four separate tools used for project management across multiple departments into one central work repository that made it possible to assess what work was requested, determine work volume and timing, eliminate work duplication, and prioritize requests based on business needs — without inefficient customization by team. User adoption more than doubled and the new workflow solution was presented to corporate-level executives.

2016 — The business teamed with Adobe to launch four more Market Management teams and a Product Provider team — all focused on supporting new processes and continuously optimizing others. Priorities included building request queues, project templates, dashboards, and real-time status reports, as well as introducing online proofing capabilities for automated reviews and approvals.

Allianz Partners used Adobe Workfront to establish more efficient workflows and new processes for employees working in its Market Management department. The company also implemented Regulatory Compliance as a separate entity and created automated workflows for compliance review and approval.

Shortly after, Product Provider joined the solution and the Implementations Department was activated. Several other teams and departments quickly followed.

2017 – Workfront Proof was introduced to deliver even more automation and faster approval turnaround across departments. Time tracking also was implemented, allowing for better estimation of project timelines as well as resource allocation and utilization. Market Management teams replaced weekly work request review and status meetings with daily stand-ups, returning several hours per week back to team members. Daily decision-making for backlog and prioritization management was shifted to team managers which freed up time at the VP/Director levels for strategic initiatives.

2018 – Agile teams and workflows rolled out. The Business Intelligence & Analysis team was the first to introduce sprint planning and backlog management within Workfront. User adoption increased. Executive-level reporting and data summary dashboards continued to give decision makers and team members across the world more visibility into the work being done, allowing for increased transparency and collaboration.

Allianz Partners’ success led to the launch of another Workfront instance for Allianz Partners Organizational Management at the company’s headquarters in Europe. The new instance introduced a global project request queue and collaborative project management for capital projects. Several departments at Allianz Global Assistance Canada also began implementation, and requests for new work from other business units began to flow in.