Flexibility is one of Wrike’s biggest assets as a platform. Our work management software can easily be used by teams that want out-of-the-box solutions and easy-to-follow templates. But it can equally be used successfully by teams with even more complex workflows and needs.
Our Wrike Elite 100 finalists in the Innovation category represent the top tier of Wrike users who have been able to take our software and make it work for their particular, complicated use cases. And their stories are inspiring. There’s nothing better than learning a brand new way to use Wrike — even after working here for years!
This year, the Innovation category was packed with entries that showcased next-level problem solving. Our finalists went one step further than optimization, reinventing processes and turning Wrike into the beating heart of digital transformation across their teams and organizations.
Interested in learning how leading teams are using Wrike to accelerate innovation? Read on to learn from three of our 2025 Elite 100 Innovation finalists.
Automating complexity to create a seamless experience for end users
Our first finalist, Dan Criel from SAP, took innovation to new heights by tackling a challenge that many enterprise teams face: API rate limits. SAP’s marketing operations team relies heavily on Wrike Integrate automations to keep work moving smoothly. But as their custom workflows grew, so did the volume of API calls — leading to rate limit errors when multiple custom fields were updated at once.
Instead of scaling back, Dan engineered a solution: an “event queuing” system using Wrike Integrate. This system collects all trigger events for the same Wrike object within a set time window, then condenses them into a single API call. The result? No more rate limiting, no lost data, and a seamless experience for end users.
Thanks to Wrike Integrate, we’ve gone from manual, error-prone processes to a fully automated, scalable system. Our data is more accurate, our users are happier, and we’re able to innovate faster than ever.
Dan Criel, Senior Marketing Process & Technology Expert, SAP
Dan’s automations didn’t stop there. SAP’s Wrike platform is now a hub for marketing ops, integrating with tools like Knak and Marketo for email campaign creation and approvals. The automations sync statuses, enforce naming conventions, and generate complex project structures that adapt dynamically to each campaign’s regional needs. What once required hours of manual adjusting and configuration now happens in seconds — saving time, reducing errors, and empowering the team to focus on strategy.
Transforming time-consuming manual workflows with Wrike automations
Next up is Pietro Poli from Yourbiz, who partnered with Industrie CBI, an Italian leader in industrial ventilation solutions. Pietro’s challenge was to overhaul its entire project management process, which started as a patchwork of manual steps.
Industrie CBI previously used Navision as its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to export data, import it into spreadsheets, and track progress across disparate tools. This resulted in wasted hours, siloed information, and slow decision making.
Pietro’s team started by mapping every process, then used Wrike Integrate to bridge the gap between Navision and Wrike. One particular automation made all the difference: They added a “last update date” field to the ERP, allowing the system to filter and process only updated records. The new process cut daily manual checks by 95%.
New projects now flow directly into Wrike, where a custom “Navision Incoming” space acts as a control panel for intake, approvals, and blueprint creation. Wrike automations handle everything from status updates to cascading assignments, keeping data accurate and teams aligned.
The impact of Pietro’s innovation with Wrike was immediately noticeable:
- Over 10 hours saved per week for every manager
- A drastic reduction in internal emails
- Full visibility into future workload and resource allocation
- Faster approvals and smoother project progress
By automating our intake and project creation, we freed up valuable time for innovation and R&D. Wrike became our single source of truth, and our team is more agile than ever.
Pietro Poli, Operations Manager, Yourbiz
Creating a dual-space command center with an all-encompassing dashboard
Our third finalist, Chris Tinsley, actually won the Innovation Elite 100 award this year! Chris, from SharkNinja, proved his innovative chops by designing a truly scalable system.
With nearly 1,000 users, SharkNinja needed a flexible platform to connect strategic planning and creative execution across global teams. The solution? A dual-space architecture: a Project Hub for high-level planning (timelines, budgets, health status) and a Proof Hub for creative deliverables. Chris and his team use cross-tagging and URL fields to link milestones to assets, and they jumped at the chance to try Wrike’s dashboard parameters and sections when they were released.
“We built a single ’command center’ dashboard with dozens of widgets, organized in persona-based sections, including executive view, creative view, finance view, and region view,” Chris explained. Now, users can toggle parameters, choosing from region, status, campaign, and object type, to see only what matters.
Wrike’s automations turn one dashboard into hundreds of dynamic reports. Clutter vanished, adoption soared.
Chris Tinsley, Director of Creative Production & Operations, SharkNinja
This innovation paid off in spades, resulting in:
- Status meetings cut by 50%
- Review cycles 40–60% faster for major campaigns
- 3,000+ hours/month saved by eliminating file hunting
- Forecast accuracy above 95%, protecting millions in spend
- Higher morale and platform adoption across the business
Chris effectively used Wrike to set every team in SharkNinja up for success. He explained, “This dashboard gives every persona instant, self-serve insight — no extra dashboards, no duplicated widgets.” The finance team can filter the same board by cost center while creatives flip to proof status; executives can view a risk-only slice with one toggle.
This flexibility scales effortlessly: five assets or five hundred, one region or five continents — same structure, same dashboard, just different parameters. Wrike didn’t just fit our business; it elevated it.
Chris Tinsley, Director of Creative Production & Operations, SharkNinja
