Old School but New Clarity; How Vanguard Implemented Asana for Old School’s NPD Process

Overview

As Old School, a South African clothing brand, continued to expand its product range, managing new product development across multiple teams became increasingly complex. Product concepts, design revisions, supplier coordination, sampling, approvals, and launch activities were being tracked through a combination of emails, spreadsheets, Microsoft Teams, and Trello making it difficult to maintain visibility and accountability. They also admitted they had a lot of ‘work about work’, from searching for context or asking for information and keeping teams updated manually. 

To address these challenges, Old School partnered with Vanguard Cloud Consulting to implement Asana as the central project management platform for its new product development (NPD) process.

The Challenge

Old School's product development lifecycle involved multiple stakeholders, including:

• Product designers

• Brand and marketing teams

• Procurement and supplier managers

• Quality assurance

• Leadership and commercial teams

Without a standardised workflow, the business experienced:

• Limited visibility into project progress

• Difficulty tracking ownership of tasks

• Delays caused by manual follow-ups and chasing

• Inconsistent processes

• Challenges coordinating product launches across departments

The company needed a solution that would standardise processes while remaining easy for teams to adopt.

The Solution

Vanguard Cloud Consulting worked closely with Old School's leadership and operational teams to design and implement an Asana workspace tailored to the company's product development process.

The implementation included:

Discovery

Vanguard facilitated a discovery with nominated champions from each department. Pain points were aired as above and onboarding concerns raised such as adoption, training and trust. We set the aim of getting every department to have a ‘Single Source of Truth’ and a templated process to help standardise. 

Design: Standardised Project Templates

A repeatable New Product Development project template was created that included key phases such as:

• Pre-production

• Briefing 

• PO’s

• Product Development

• Product Activation

• Post Production

Each new product could now be initiated using a consistent structure for ease of use and standardised reporting. 

The template also included pre-configured filtered views. As new product development is a lengthy process and a single launch may involve multiple products, each project contains a large number of tasks. These filtered views allow each team to quickly access the tasks relevant to them at each stage of the development process, making it easier to stay focused and manage their workload.

Multi-homing into team workflows

In the template some tasks are ‘multihomed’ into team workflow projects. This helps teams focus on their processes without having to switch between projects. The Team workflows built include:

• A PO Payment Process for finance 

• A shipping process managing the shipping to stores

• Paid Socials Board for the Marketing Team

Workflow Automation

In the template and workflows, automations were implemented to ensure less administrative effort.

• An AI studio rule to notify marketing when all POs are completed to ensure that marketing can continue their process.

• Automated subtasks in team workflows to ensure that steps and processes are followed

• Routing Rules to trigger moving to a section based off Custom Field Values

• Approval additions at certain stages

Change Management

Technology implementation was supported with a structured adoption programme.

Vanguard Cloud Consulting provided:

• Initial and ongoing discovery into how Old Schools processes run

• Recordings of each session for future training resource

• Convention Guidance and Best Practices for ensuring no ‘Wild West’ Asana scenarios

• Design sessions working on building and optimising the NPD process and template

• Team focussed sessions to ensure workflows suited their needs

• Fun and Interactive User training workshops

This ensured employees were confident using Asana in their day-to-day work.

Outcomes

Following implementation, Old School has established a more structured and transparent product development process.

Key improvements included:

• A single source of truth for all new product development activities

• Greater visibility across departments

• Improved processes for team workflows

• More consistent project execution using standardized templates

• Reduced ‘work about work’ 

• Faster identification of project risks and bottlenecks

• Improved collaboration between design, procurement, marketing, and leadership teams including dependencies

The new Asana environment provided a scalable framework that supports future product growth while enabling management to monitor progress in real time.

Conclusion

By partnering with Vanguard Cloud Consulting, Old School became ‘New School’ in its management of the main business process of New Product Development, ensuring visibility, collaboration and focus.

"Our consultant was understanding, enthusiastic and always willing to find a solution — the company-wide training was some of the most engaged and enjoyable we’ve ever experienced.”

Llewellyn Strydom

Chief Technology Officer