How the San Francisco 49ers use Wrike

All great teams require an aligned game plan and flawless execution. Unfortunately, the complexity of today’s work environment makes both a challenge. But with the help of its innovation partner Citrix, the San Francisco 49ers are removing the complexity and noise from work, and empowering their team off the field to be as successful as their team on the field. When the 49ers first partnered with Citrix more than six years ago, the team was looking to streamline its operations and fuel collaboration. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, they enabled remote work for their employees quickly to support a dispersed workforce and keep its operations running, using digital workspace solutions to stay connected and collaborate.

The addition of Wrike to the Citrix portfolio was great news for the 49ers — the team was already a customer. For the past three years, the 49ers have used Wrike’s project management solution to support production of video and media assets. They turned to Wrike because they were looking for a more efficient and effective way to serve internal partners who needed these assets.

“We are a fully functioning creative agency housed within the 49ers marketing department,” says Nate Steele, Manager of Production and Media Assets.

Steele’s team produces everything from sponsorship videos to images for the team’s social media channels. With games almost every weekend, from September to January, plus preseason and postseason, and requests for assets to support sponsors, community engagement, and more, having a tool that could enable effective communication and the quick turnarounds required was critical to managing the flow of work. And Wrike delivers.

Improved communication and visibility

Before Wrike, requests and follow-ups were getting buried in inboxes, leading to miscommunication and wasted time and effort. Now, requesters complete a customized form when they need help with production of video or other media assets. The information comes to Steele’s team, and the work can move forward without multiple follow-ups, speeding the process.

“We were looking for a more useful way to get information amongst 49ers internal teams. This platform allows dialogue between our team and the project requestor. It provides a robust tool for tracking effort on project request and allows collaboration on edit requests and approvals” Steele says.

For example, he can provide feedback to his video producers directly in the asset, which helps to streamline the review cycle. He can also track the time spent on projects, getting valuable insights into the amount of resources used to complete a request.

Blueprints

Wrike’s Blueprints feature has been one of the biggest advantages for Steele’s team. Blueprints enable users to manage projects, folders, task templates, and more, and the feature is especially useful for recurring work. They were able to cut the majority of phone calls and emails around projects, while still supporting mutual decision making, from which changes need to be made to whether a project should even go forward. Blueprints helps the team to get the information they need on the front end and eliminate barriers so they can do the work. “What we were doing here was buying back time for our team of content creators,” Steele says.

Ready for remote

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the team worked together in a single location, and providing feedback on projects could be as simple as a face-to-face conversation. Having Wrike in place, Steele says, was a win for his team because they were already set up to support remote collaboration. They didn’t have to scramble at the onset of the pandemic to figure out how to engage remotely (and effectively) with content requestors and keep their content creators on track as they approached the 2020 season.