Wrike Vs Asana – The Best of Team Management Applicaiton

Brian Lam, marketing Operations Coordinator of Hootsuite says task volume is the biggest issue they faced when their team growth paced up. Catering to 175 countries and 10 million customers is not an easy task, and Hootsuite team did start facing challenges in team communications.

We had no way to pull reports, so there was no way of knowing how many projects we were doing, who we were doing them for, or how long it was taking us. ~ Kate Chalmers, Director of Marketing Operations, Hootsuite

Lack of transparency resulted in poor task management, until Hootsuite team turned to Wrike, a task management app giving tough competition to other major players of the market.

Team collaboration and smart task management has become an integral part for any organisation or firm. Whether there are two members or twenty, an app that lets you have transparent overview of whats happening is always useful. Various cloud-based and web-based applications are available in the market, like Wrike, Basecamp, Asana, Trello, Jira, Teamwork, Freedcamp and many more. You can check my previous blog on 10 Best Basecamp Alternatives for more information.

With so many options to choose from, often it becomes difficult to judge which one will suit your needs. I had the same trouble. I started with Jira but I think Jira is great for development teams. Then I moved to Trello. I loved the card-moving feature. It was fun but still I found it a little clustered. Next I tried Asana, which was neat. I liked how I could favourite works and also have separate inbox for an task overview. However, with Asana I couldn't track the time needed for a work to get done. I wanted a way to track time. Thus my search continued until I started using Wrike.

Wrike and Asana are very much similar, with team management features being the core for both. Yet Wrike, although less hyped, has much more polished features than Asana. Before I tell you how Wrike is challenging Asana, here is an outline of what Wrike is all about.

Getting Started with Wrike

Wrike is a management software that enables you to collaborate with your team effectively. Whether you are a remote worker or an in-office employee, Wrike lets you do real-time task managements in minutes. Easy to use and simple, straight-forward features make Wrike a great team collaboration app. The kanban-style dashboard of Wrike is something I loved.

Wrike has tutorials to help you get started. There are documents on how to create a task, add items, edit them or schedule them. Here is a video by Technology Advice on how Wrike works:

Features of Wrike:

Lets take a look at the features of Wrike and how it works.

Team and Project Management

Wrike uses a folder hierarchy to help you manage your series of projects. You can create, edit, delete and schedule tasks using various colour codes. You can easily assign these tasks to your team members. Best part is, you can use colours to indicate the status of an individual task. You can clearly show whether your task is completed, in progress, due or to be done. Are you thinking about emails? Well, Wrike has that sorted out too. There are series of integrations with email providers. This lets you turn an email to a task in a click.

While Wrike is a great tool to manage and collaborate with everyone in your team, it is also great if you want to schedule your own tasks. You can have your own dashboard where you can schedule and maintain your own tasks.

Real-time Editing

Wrike's live editing feature is great for coordinating efforts from everyone across the team. Everyone in your team works simultaneously resulting in a faster pace and accuracy in work. There is no place for guessing when everyone is able to see what the others are doing and are also able to modify the same. You can view all the changes made- whether it is just a single word or a whole paragraph or some due date or a massive change in project details.

Interactive and real-time Reporting

Very recently, Wrike announced the latest functionality to 'reporting' feature: Wrike Reports Snapshots. You can now have a snapshot of all the reports like weekly status update, team performances, activity reports and accomplishments. This feature is available for Enterprise plans on Wrike.

Wrike reports available since November 2015 enables you to have quick insights in just a click. These reports are easy to understand and are great to help you figure out how your work is progressing.

We found that by using real-time Reports, a typical marketing team of 10 can save at least 10-15 hours per week on status updates and account management work, effectively giving you back an entire workday. ~ Dmitry Petrashev, Product Manager at Wrike.

Customised Workflows

Not every team has the similar kind of workflow. A marketing team will never function like a development team. Wrike understands this, and hence has custom workflows. This not just lets you structure your work but also accelerates the pace at which the work gets done. Starting with approval to tracking to sealing the deal- you can do it all right here on Wrike.

Here is an overview of how workflows usually are:

• Approval Process
• Product development
• Marketing

Here is how you do it:

I will mention about a typical workflow that happens at my workplace. First we require an approval to a plan, then we start building content around it, next comes the design and development (at times I find these three happening simultaneously too!), issue tracking and finally we have progress overview.

Generally the admin creates the workflows and has the permission to make edits. Once the changes are saved, your team will be able to see the new workflow created. This is how it looks:

Next step is to assign workflows to teams or projects. You can do this by clicking on the folder and changing the workflow setting. Once done, you can see the new workflow in the status menu.

You can now build dashboards to have real time progress reviews. Your dashboard will love somewhat like this:

Workload management and Burndown Chart

This is the most amazing feature I guess every team member would want. Few weeks back, one of our team members was overworked. As it turns out, we did not get to know it because she told us. Rather it was Wrike. You can easily know if any of your team member is over burdened or simply bored with the "Workload View" of Wrike. You might be thinking how this happens?

Lets imagine you have a team of four people, say Jack, Henry, James and Lily. Each one has a task assigned to them. Wrike will easily show you if Jack is overburdened out of the four. At a quick glance, you can see Jack struggling with multiple heavy projects while Lily is semi-occupied. The overloaded person's tasks are highlighted in orange on Wrike.

So what do you do?

Wrike gives you simple drag-and-drop option to move around the tasks to the slots of those who are not clamped up. You make edits which are notified to every one in the team via email as well as Activity stream. Here is a sample of overload view:

Wrike Analytics

Wrike introduced the analytics widget for a quick understanding of project status and individual workloads. You can easily edit and customise your progress reports, delete charts that are not in use, and also add charts that are favourites right on your dashboard. Here are few charts Wrike offers:

Performance Chart: You can easily identify any setbacks in your team and effectively measure the progress. You can use filters to have effective viewing, like all tasks, planned tasks, completed, due by this week, overdue, etc. A performance chart looks like this:

Baseline chart: This is most valuable for project managers. You can easily see a direct comparison of the progress report with the original plan. This comes handy when you have to plan multiple projects. You can filter the chart to see the important changes made in the project schedule. For instance, see the below image:

Work progress : As the name suggests, you can view how individual team members are progressing. This chart will give you an overview of the productivity of your team. Whether a member is underperforming or exceeding expectations, this chart has all the information at a click.

Gantt Chart : This is an "advanced way to track project timeline". You can use this chart to understand how a particular project is progressing, and how it will be impacted by a new project or other projects running simultaneously. You can plan big and visualise the scope of your projects with Gantt Chart. To know what a Gantt Chart is, you can read the blog on Wrike blog: What is a Gantt chart?

Features of a Gantt chart includes:

• Timeline split into days, months and years
• Task dependency lines or arrows
• Full duration represented for each task
• Colour codes for task statuses like on schedule, completed or due; and more.

In short, I would say Gantt chart is for organised visual thinkers!

Wrike Apps and Integrations

Wrike is available for both iOS and Android devices. Android devices with version 3 or later supports Wrike, and for iOS it is iOS 8+. Wrike is available for free download on both the stores.

Wrike has integrations with a host of cloud apps: Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and Microsoft OneDrive. Hence, you can be relaxed about backups and toggling files between various devices. Apart from integrating cloud storage apps, Wrike also integrates with other softwares like Salesforce, Zapier, Chrome integration, LinkedIn, Marketo, HubSpot, Slack, Jira and many more. You will also get extension for Adobe® Creative Cloud®. You can see the full list of integrations .

Wrike API

Wrike API is great if you want your own custom integration. It is easy and quick. Wrike's API version include:

• REST principles make Wrike API more seamless.
• Popular request methods available like custom field, subtasks, and other such account management functionalities.

You can visit the Developer site - developers.wrike.com, which will give you instant access to the API documentations. Also you or your developer can request for API keys directly from this site.

Wrike for Enterprises

Wrike is designed to cater to companies having teams of 5 to 50,000. It is perfect for Enterprises. Here is how:

• Easy collaborations
  • Live editing
  • Tracking documents, images and everything on one workspace
  • Real-time reporting, work statuses and activity streams
• Project Management
  • Manage everything like project portfolios, individual projects and large programs
  • Easy tracking with Enterprise task management software
  • Assign projects, track time and schedule work
  • Advanced Analytics
• High-end Security
  • User groups and custom permissions
  • OKTA & SAML integration
  • SSL 128 Bit Encryption
  • SSAE 16 Certified Data Centers
• Professional Services and Support
  • Chats, emails and support over phone
  • Extended consultancy when required
  • Implementation and change management consulting
• Business-oriented and Personalised Wrike
  • Easily fits any team's workflows
  • Custom fields and statuses for effective budgeting, prioritising and customising workflows
  • Integrations with Salesforce, Google apps, Box, Dropbox, and other popular tools.

Wrike promises a growth in productivity by 20%-55% for an enterprise.

Let us see how Wrike has helped enterprises like Marketing Agencies and Project Managers

Samuel Miller, creative director and founder of ONLYCH1LD says

If you can find a tool that allows you to focus on your work and your relationship rather than the technology itself; it's really helpful for us, Wrike does that.

is a video production agency that has been a Wrike user and has essentially benefitted from the features Wrike offers to an agency.

The Wrike solution includes the Wrike's extension for Adobe Creative Cloud and also takes care of those projects that require managerial supervisions like reviews and approvals. Feature list also includes:

• Resource and Workload Management
• Document versioning
• Project templates
• Time tracking and budgeting

You can also use resources designed for the creative teams.

While Wrike supports agencies, it also has tailored solutions for project managers.

Andrew Hartman, Director of strategic projects at Sevenly (raises money and awareness through online retails for non-profit organisations) and associated with Sevenly till 2014 was quoted

The project manager has tons of work to divvy up, but individual team members don't have to be stressed. Wrike takes complex projects and makes them simple for the people on your team.

For project managers, Wrike has a robust and practical solution to ensure success and a collaboration loved by all. You can expect:

• Timeline with Critical path (Gantt Charts)
• Resource and Workload management
• Cross-team collaborations
• Custom status and workflows
• Real time status updates
• Visual dashboards and interactive reporting.

You can read how Wrike helped Sevenly in creating transparency in workflows.

Wrike Pricing

Wrike gives you four plans to choose from. You can start with the FREE plan (upto 5 users). The paid plans start from $9.80/user/month. The paid plans are billed annually and all of them have free trials for 30 days. There are three plans:

For Marketers, Wrike comes at $34.60/user/month (billed annually). It includes creative brief request forms, online proofing and approval, and Wrike's extension for Adobe Creative Cloud. You can take a free trial.

You can enhance your paid plans with the add-on feature (included in the free trials) of Wrike:

Proofing and approval at $9.80/user/month

Wrike has a separate plan for enterprises. You will need to contact for the pricing (from 5 to unlimited users). The pricing plan for enterprises are flexible and contains features like advanced customisations, security, license (annual or monthly), around 20 shareable dashboards, storage capacities starting from 100 GB and so much more.

Overall Summary

Wrike is a robust solution for marketers, project managers, agencies, and team leaders. The features are clean, advanced and specifically designed to help you eliminate clumsy email threads for team collaboration.

Like I had mentioned in the beginning, Wrike is giving strong competition to another popular task management app Asana.

Asana ventured into the market one year prior to Wrike and has earned accolades for its easy to use features. While Asana and Wrike are almost similar, I find Wrike leading the way in certain ways.

Wrike vs Asana

Asana's core feature is task management like Wrike. Features that are common to both are:

• Taks management
• Reporting
• Document management
• Available on iOS, Android and Window (Wrike is not available on Windows devices)

Now lets see how Wrike is better than Asana.

Wrike's features like Time Tracking, Budgeting, Resource Management and support makes it a complete winner against Asana.

Asana does not give the option to track how long a project is taking to get completed. You can schedule, edit and tag people like on Wrike, but you cannot calculate the exact amount of time it is taking.
The clock ticks on Wrike making it possible to evaluate and plan tasks accordingly.
Also the colour codes for project statuses on Wrike is awesome. Asana has checkmarks only to indicate completion of a project/task.

Enterprises can track budgets for their projects on Wrike- a feature that is unavailable on Asana. You can configure your projects to track budgets and other things that matter to you. Wrike allows you to restrict visibility of budget tracking, hence keeping it secure and selective.

Both Asana and Wrike enables you to create, assign, reassign, edit and schedule tasks. What Wrike offers extra here is Workload view. You cannot understand whether your team member is subdued under workload unless some kind of highlighting happens. That is exactly what Wrike does and Asana doesn't.

Last is support. While both the tools provide support, only Wrike provides phone support. Isn't that great? You have more avenues to get help on Wrike. Also Wrike provodes premium support on additional fees, wherelse Asana has no such fees. There is one subscription fees, and that it.

Here is an overview of Asana

• Create, schedule, assign and review progress.
• Inbox for daily updates like tasks assigned, tasks pending, and tea updates that concern you.
• Checkmarks to indicate project completion.
• Customised workflows for every team.
• Hearts: to mark favourites, or give thumbs up or 'like'.
• Add attachments from computer, Google drive, dropbox, Box.
• Direct commenting on tasks and tagging with @mentions
• Powerful search to find a work.
• Easy to understand and view dashboard.
• Calendar to know when a work is done or due
• Gallery view to see files that have been attached or find them individually.
  Collaborate with vendors, contractors, and partners.

Premium account holders can have:

• Private projects
• Admin controls
• Task dependencies
• Unlimited dashboards
• Upto 15 members to each team and unlimited guests
• SSO and SAML
• Data export
• Customer Success program

Like Wrike, Asana also has a host of integrations. Some integrations common to both are: Slack, Dropbox, Box, Chrome, Google drive and more. Integration list also includes GitHub, Okta, etc. You can find the full list here.

Asana for Marketing, Project Management and Managers

Like Wrike's varied solutions, Asana also has solutions designed for Marketing, Project Management and Managers.

Marketing: You can track your project from the start till its checked off.

• Campaigns are easy and smooth
• Editorial calendar gives an overview of the entire content planning
• Event Management is flawless

Project Management: Stepping out of individual tasks, Asana enables project managers to take note of the project progress, create a roadmap and successfully plan a launch.

Managers: Asana lets you be on the top with advanced and high-end strategies. Starting with one-to-one meetings to planning out strategies, managers can do it all here.

• Set goals and outline a strategy to be followed
• Create custom reports to track team performances and project insights
• Plan smartly using one-on-one meetings and tracking individual's professional development in the team

Asana APIs and Pricing

Like Wrike, Asana also has a RESTful API interface. Asana Connect is a secure way of granting API access to third-party apps without divulging your username and password. You can get more information about Asana API on the Asana Development Site.

Pricing

Asana has straight-forward pricing charts. Its either free or you pay. The FREE plan is for teams having upto 15 members while the paid or the Premium plan comes at $8.33 per member per month. The more members you have, the lesser per member price it is. The premium plan is billed annually.

Overall summary: Asana is a great tool and comes for free for 15 members. That's huge. The task management which is its core feature is excellent.

Opensource alternatives to Wrike & Asana

Both Wrike and Asana are great tools. However, there are few alternatives that you can take a look at.

taigo.io
Redmine
Taskboard
Gantt Project

Wrike has been touted to be better than other task management tools like Basecamp and Asana. The infographic below from Capterra proves why. Here is a snippet from the infographic:

Start using Wrike today and tell me how else it is better than other existing alternatives. Also if you come across a tool that is better than Wrike, let me know in the comments.