How 2 Wrike Elite 100 finalists spark engagement

In 2025, we added “Engagement” as a new category to the Elite 100 to spotlight a capability high-performing teams rely on every day: meaningful participation.. At the time of these submissions, finalists used Klaxoon as a standalone visual collaboration solution to brainstorm, align stakeholders, and organize ideas more effectively. Today, Wrike supports these same types of workflows through Wrike Whiteboard, powered by Klaxoon, helping teams connect visual collaboration more directly to execution. 

In the era of hybrid and remote work, visual collaboration is essential for engagement. Having team members work through brainstorming sessions together on a shared whiteboard brings out ideas in a way that a spreadsheet or blank document just can’t. 

So, to capture the incredible improvements in engagement from our customers, we added Engagement to the list of Elite 100 categories, and today we want to share two incredible submissions, including the category winner,  and how they turned brainstorming sessions into roadmaps, transformed “tribal knowledge” into structured data, and sparked a culture of participation across continents. 

Let’s take a look.

Visual storyboarding: Reshaping market research

For Giulia Fornaciari at MMR Group, engagement is the key ingredient for market research. When dealing with a large body of complex consumer data, a big barrier to entry is taking raw notes and turning them into a narrative that actually resonates with clients.

That’s where Klaxoon comes in for Giulia. During research sessions, she uses visual boards to capture notes in real time, which helps her move information around to get a clear picture of the story as it develops. This visual clarity keeps her, her entire team, and her clients locked into the main messages the company wants to share.

Boosting client participation

Giulia bucks typical market research process trends by bringing clients into the early stages of creative work, rather than waiting until projects are fully fleshed out. And while this can reveal to clients the messier early stages, she’s found that through this process, she can achieve a level of participation that traditional PowerPoint decks can’t match. 

“When projects or videos are at an early stage, we show them to clients on Klaxoon so they can add their comments too,” Giulia noted. This helps nail down key elements early on, preventing confusion from rearing its head later — when it’s much harder to rectify. 

Giulia also uses Klaxoon’s interactive features, such as the “blob tree” template and “burning questions,” to keep attention high during client workshops. As a Wrike and Klaxoon superuser, she’s even organized internal training sessions to ensure this culture of participation can be embraced across MMR’s marketing and research teams.

Giulia’s focus on visual engagement has:

• Accelerated the analysis process by allowing teams to visualize more info at once
• Improved client collaboration by providing a space for real-time feedback on early-stage assets
• Standardized storyboarding for video creation, streamlining the path from brief to final output

By presenting data on interactive boards rather than static files, Giulia has turned a previously clunky reporting endeavor into a collaborative effort with MMR’s clients. Client, team, and individual engagement has soared, improving the research journey across the board.

Turning 3,900+ ideas into a transformation roadmap

At Columbus Global, Toby Mankertz faced a complex engagement challenge. His team was navigating a massive digital transformation involving ERP integration and data governance across diverse geographies. 

His goals for the transformation and roadmapping project were to align stakeholders around a shared vision by capturing and prioritizing thousands of requirements. A tall task, indeed, but conquering it landed him the winning spot in the Elite 100 Engagement category this year. 

Here’s how Toby turned Klaxoon into the company’s engagement tool of choice. 

Meeting in person and via Microsoft Teams, Toby facilitated brainstorming and planning sessions using Klaxoon to capture and structure participants’ input in real time. Klaxoon also helped team members visualize dependencies and priorities using a range of templates, which all Klaxoon users can access. 

Because the Klaxoon boards could be accessed by everyone on their own schedules, team members could add ideas outside of scheduled sessions, capitalizing on their momentum. 

And Toby reported that these Klaxoon brainstorming sessions were overwhelmingly successful: 

During these deep-dive workshops, team members used Klaxoon to log their insights on complex ideas such as IT/OT integration, documentation control, and continuous improvement. And as those thoughts were being logged on Klaxoon, they were simultaneously being color-coded and categorized so everyone could visualize recurring themes and pain points, overlapping concerns across departments, and areas where more information was needed. 

From whiteboard to real-world execution

Once he had a successful process to log ideas, Toby turned to putting those ideas into action. He wanted to drive real ownership, so he operationalized the engagement. He integrated Klaxoon with Smartsheet for initial tracking and then transitioned to Jira, where workshop outputs were converted into actionable tasks assigned to change leaders.

By linking each sticky note to a value dependency map and the company’s strategic growth pillars, Toby made sure that every participant could see exactly how their input would fuel the company’s future.

Toby’s engagement-led strategy delivered massive results:

• Captured 3,918 ideas from cross-functional teams that would have otherwise remained “tribal knowledge”
• Tracked over 100 change activities directly informed by visual workshops
• Reduced “toggle tax” by integrating visual ideation directly into execution tools like Jira
• Secured strategic alignment by making the transformation vision tangible and participatory for stakeholders

Most importantly, Toby built a persistent record of contribution for Columbus Global. “Klaxoon helped us move from siloed decision-making to a collaborative, data-driven approach,” Toby explained. Along the way, he gave team members a more enjoyable way to engage with company strategy and growth. 

Empowering a culture of participation

These accounts from Columbus Global and MMR highlight a key element that’s often lost in a corporate environment: people engage with what they help create. Whether it’s 3,900 ideas for an ERP rollout or a client adding feedback to a storyboard, Wrike and Klaxoon provide the space for that type of participation.

When you replace old-school types of engagement, like mind-numbingly long forms or email threads, and replace them with visual, interactive hubs, you get better team alignment and a team that’s truly invested in the outcome of the work.

Curious how other Elite 100 finalists are transforming their workflows and processes? Check out our stories from the Collaboration, Analytics, Innovation, Orchestration, and AI Strategy categories, and see how the world’s best teams are winning with Wrike.