One of the best things about working with our customers is learning about how they really use Wrike. We obviously have our own use cases here at Wrike, and of course, everything we do goes through Wrike. But getting to pull back the curtain to see how our customers work is really satisfying — and always results in both great stories to tell on our blog and ideas for how we can improve our own processes!
We invite you to nerd out with us and discover the processes that bring teams to the successful end of complex projects.
This year, we received an abundance of applications for the second annual Wrike Elite 100 competition in the Orchestration category. The winner was Anna Kravcova from Scopely, who developed a Wrike-based skills database that enhanced resourcing, transparency, and workforce planning. Her method of using Wrike also allowed her to launch a vendor evaluation program that improved accountability and strategic decision making at Scopely.
But today, we want to examine a few experiences from our Orchestration category finalists to learn more about the unique ways they use Wrike. From manufacturing to teaching to church camp, read on to see how Wrike is helping organizations put all the pieces together.
Orchestrating day-to-day tasks to make room for more
First up, we have Adam Katz from Teach Coalition. Adam demonstrated his orchestration prowess by showing how he uses Wrike to manage and plan his time, resulting in not only increased grants for his organization's client schools but also brought in additional member schools — as well as his own promotion from entry-level staffer to senior management.
A large part of Adam's work involves helping over 100 Teach Coalition's member schools and many other entities to apply for millions in state and federal grants. Adam explained, “I plan the outreach strategy, responsibilities, timeline, email blasts, application drafting and review work, and resource creation of webinars, checklists, bootcamps, guides, and so much more.” He also uses Wrike to organize all the tasks, keep track of who they're assigned to, set deadlines, add subtasks, keep notes and instructions, provide updates, use custom statuses, set reminders, and create agendas for staff meetings.
Clearly, Adam uses Wrike on a broad scale to manage a huge volume of work, and he did this with a simple yet powerful system.
Wrike is pretty much my brain on the screen.
Adam Katz, National Director of STEM and Associate Director of Government Programs, Teach Coalition
In order to maximize his time and plan accordingly throughout the week, Adam created a custom status with times, such as one, five, 15, and 30 minutes. “I assign those statuses to each task, and after that, I can plan out my weekly schedule based on the amount of time each task will take me, ensuring that I can fit all the tasks into the same day.” By assigning due dates to each task, Adam can then view tasks due each day on his widget, aptly called 'Due This Week.'
This system required some setup on the frontend, and Adam has tweaked it over the years. He and the organizations he helps have been reaping the rewards ever since.
I am able to ensure resources I create are ready and usable by staff and the hundreds of schools and other entities we assist and advise on various programs. It has resulted in significantly reducing the stress and workload of schools that utilize our guidance and services because I have sufficient time to create everything and plan all components and timelines out. It has also resulted in larger grants to schools because we have better resources to advise them on maximizing their application requests, totaling up to millions of dollars per year.
Adam Katz, National Director of STEM and Associate Director of Government Programs, Teach Coalition
Orchestrating a large interdepartmental event
While Wrike helped Adam orchestrate his own personal workflows to improve productivity, Rocky Bush at The Fellowship Church in Austin, Texas, used Wrike to unite departments and put on a large-scale public-facing vacation bible school (VBS).
Wrike didn't just help us manage VBS 2025 — it helped us work better together.
Rocky Bush, Communications Director, The Fellowship Church
During the 2025 season of vacation bible school at The Fellowship Church, Rocky's team partnered with the kids ministry team to pull off one of the biggest, most complex events of their year.
This event involved nine months of planning for two different age groups: a fun, story-driven preschool theme and a bold, high-energy theme for elementary-aged kids. Rocky explained the challenge involved: “That meant double the planning, double the creative, and double the communication — without double the stress, thanks to Wrike.”
So how did they get it done? By breaking the project into four phases that encompassed branding, curriculum elements and media, volunteer recruitment, promotional timelines, and day-of project management. Rocky reported that using Wrike's task dependencies, custom workflows, request forms, and dashboards kept their Communications and Kids' Ministry departments completely aligned.
Wrike let us assign clear owners, track hundreds of assets, and prioritize weekly deliverables without ever losing sight of the big picture.
Rocky Bush, Communications Director, The Fellowship Church
From conception to completion, The Fellowship Church's VBS team curated and delivered over 500 individual assets, from T-shirts and banners to lesson slides and social posts. “Everything was completed on time, with excellence, and with full team buy-in. Wrike made what could've been chaos into a celebration.”
Orchestrating an entire process shift
Now, let's look at an even bigger scale. Mike Fank, at Wisconsin Metal Parts, earned his finalist spot thanks to a complete overhaul of one of the company's most important systems. The Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) process spans multiple departments: sales, engineering, quality, and production. It also involves dozens of critical steps that must be completed on time and in the correct sequence so that production isn't delayed.
The APQP process before Wrike was fragmented, which led to missed steps and unclear accountability. But when Mike's team was able to implement a structured Wrike workflow, the tide shifted in the right direction. Mike explained, “Wrike gave us the framework to master the orchestration of cross-functional work, turning what used to be a pain point into a competitive advantage.”
Using Wrike enabled Mike's team to unify project launches into clearly defined phases with dependencies, owners, and timelines. Custom dashboards allowed each department to focus on their priorities, while project managers maintained oversight of status and risks. This transformation resulted in a scalable, repeatable system that reduced chaos, improved on-time delivery, and aligned all stakeholders — a complete win for their team's wide-ranging orchestration processes, with Wrike as the foundation.
Wrike's flexibility allowed us to pivot rapidly based on user feedback, continuously refining workflows, dashboards, and processes to better fit how teams operate.
Mike Fank, Quality Manager, Wisconsin Metal Parts
