Work Innovation Award Winner, 2025

Morningstar earned Asana’s AI Visionary Work Innovation Award for its strategic use of AI to drive execution at scale. Facing increased complexity and demand, the organization strategically leveraged Asana AI Studio to streamline cross-functional work, from research content pipelines to product intake and prioritization. With AI-powered automation, routing, and reporting, teams reduced manual effort, accelerated timelines, and unlocked significant cost savings. Now, teams work within a unified system that reduces low-value work and empowers them to focus on what matters most. Morningstar’s transformation isn’t just about using AI; it’s about using it wisely to unlock real business value.

Asana helps us drive efficiencies that scale and foster the growth that’s needed. We’ve broken down barriers for collaboration across the organization.

Laura Kohl, Chief Information Officer, Morningstar

Asana for request tracking

Turning scattered requests into strategic roadmaps with AI-powered intake

Morningstar’s Retirement product teams originally tracked product requests through a manual, ad hoc process. With no standardized intake process, submissions came in from every direction—email, chat, and hallway conversations—and often lacked the context needed to assess value. Saying yes to everything led to overcommitment, a scattered roadmap, and the inability to evaluate true business value. 

To address this challenge, the Retirement team implemented a structured framework with AI Studio to manage the full product lifecycle from intake to impact measurement. Now, requests are evaluated with consistent criteria, capacity is forecasted accurately, and roadmaps are centralized and current. As a result, the team has eliminated two weeks from their review timeline and shifted from reactive execution to strategic, value-driven planning.

Our roadmapping process was reactive and manual. Our ultimate goal with Asana AI is to make the process more strategic, so we can quickly prioritize work that will drive revenue and speed to market.

Michael Allen, Global Head of Retirement Technology and Product, Morningstar Retirement

AI-enhanced intake and workflows improve prioritization and planning

• All requests are submitted through a centralized Asana intake system, with AI Studio automatically naming requests, identifying information gaps, and generating standardized summaries for easier evaluation.

• Complex requests follow a specialized workflow and are systematically scored on business value, complexity, and cost, empowering the product team to approve, defer, or reject requests based on data. 

• Once requests are approved, rules validate data completeness and automatically route items to the appropriate roadmaps.

Automated documentation and outcome tracking increase efficiency and accountability

• Once roadmap items are completed, AI Studio generates release notes based on task information. If more detail is needed, product managers are automatically notified to add more detail.

• Automated rules automatically create follow-up tasks and subtasks to measure the success of each roadmap item against expected outcomes.

Previously, it took two weeks to review a request and gather the information we needed to proceed. Now we can eliminate time spent on manual back and forth because Asana AI identifies and captures the information we need right off the bat.

Kim Hirsch, Director of Product Management, Morningstar Retirement

Asana for content planning

Streamlining research content workflows with AI-powered automation

Managing Morningstar’s internal research content across departments was previously slow, siloed, and costly. The Research team relied on an outdated system to track internal content, requiring manual coordination across disconnected workflows and tools. Frequent updates were shared via email or chat, causing delays and missed amplification opportunities across paid, earned, and owned channels.

To modernize their approach, the organization replaced their legacy system with a centralized research content pipeline in Asana, powered by AI Studio. Now, nearly 300 stakeholders across research, editorial, copyediting, media, and marketing collaborate in a single platform with shared visibility and automation driving every step. The result: a streamlined, scalable system that saves nearly 15,000 hours and $600K annually, freeing teams to focus on strategic work.

Morningstar is all in on AI—it’s a company goal for us to continue to leverage advances in AI to drive innovation for both our customers externally and our employees internally. The Asana workflows our teams are building are achieving that goal while helping us drive efficiencies and break down barriers to collaboration across the organization. 

Laura Kohl, Chief Information Officer, Morningstar

A centralized pipeline with built-in AI ensures speed and consistency

• Authors submit content via a standardized form that automatically creates a task in the content pipeline project.

• AI Studio analyzes form inputs to assign stakeholders, set due dates for copyediting, and flag missing information.

• If more information is needed, AI Studio generates follow-up comments and subtasks for the author, minimizing delays and manual follow-ups.

• Once content is marked ready, AI Studio triggers next steps for copy editors and manages back-and-forth edits, notifying stakeholders when edits are ready, returned, or complete.

• Stakeholders are notified of key milestones, including publication dates, without needing to follow up manually. 

• All content submissions feed into a centralized project in Asana, creating a single source of truth across research, editorial, marketing, and operational teams.

Automation amplifies output and impact

• As content nears completion, AI Studio routes tasks to the appropriate marketing and media project boards for amplification.

• Stakeholders are automatically notified of content status, giving them visibility into upcoming launches.

Asana keeps my team’s global thought-leadership content coordinated across a cross-functional team of editors, marketers, and product leaders. It’s our single source of truth and helps eliminate the costs that occur when the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

Laura Lutton, Global Head, Manager Research, Morningstar

Asana for work intake

Scaling efficiencies with streamlined processes

Before Asana, Morningstar’s Central Technology team didn’t have a standardized way to intake or kick off work. They relied on a Word document to track the hundreds of requests they received each year from across the organization. This manual process didn’t provide the structure needed to properly scope, resource, budget, and approve project requests, leading to a clogged backlog and projects with unclear scopes and objectives.

By creating a standardized process in Asana, the team automates work intake and simplifies prioritization. This approach allows them to efficiently manage their growing workload as the business scales.

Teams execute faster with standardized intake requests

• Work intake processes are standardized and automated in Asana, making it easier to quickly evaluate, prioritize, and approve requests with greater consistency.

• New work requests are submitted using an Asana form and automatically populated in a shared project, ensuring all necessary information is captured for immediate visibility and action.

• Custom fields track standardized evaluation criteria, helping stakeholders make faster, more consistent decisions on approvals and prioritization.

Our intake process in Asana helps us harness our action-driven culture in a more productive and organized way, so we spend our time in the right way and on the right things.

Katie Dowling, Head of Global Technology Delivery & Operations, Morningstar

Clarity that drives prioritization and planning

• Leaders gain full visibility into every stage of the workflow, as all work is organized within connected projects and portfolios.

• With flexibility to slice and dice their work data, teams can better assess work’s risk and value, enabling more informed decisions on prioritization.

• With approved projects in the portfolio, teams can easily report progress and demonstrate how it connects to high-level goals, enabling leaders to assess capacity, plan, and coordinate across functions more effectively.

Prior to Asana, we were kicking off projects left and right without management. Now we’re able to effectively funnel work as it comes in, which allows us to do more work as we grow.

Sapan Patel, Director of Program Management (IT PMO), Morningstar

Asana for resource management

Maximizing team impact with smarter resourcing decisions

Before moving to Asana, Morningstar’s teams didn’t have a clear way to prioritize work—and they said yes to every request. That led to an overcommitted, overworked, and underperforming team.

With Asana, teams have a full view of project lifecycles and in-flight work, making it easier to understand capacity and strategically allocate resources to priority projects. Plus, they have the data to support those decisions.

A strategic system for managing resources streamlines work

• Portfolios give leaders a high-level view of all projects in flight, their status, and resources allocated.

• With a better understanding of what needs to get done, by whom, and why, teams can focus on saying “yes” to high-impact initiatives.

• This improved visibility also helps the team identify capacity risks, get work back on track, and notify stakeholders ahead of time when projects are delayed.

Before we migrated our projects to Asana, we were overcommitting all of the time. Now we have more intelligence and we have more data. We know what we can and can’t take on—and we can have the right conversations about prioritization and how projects align to our strategic plan.

Sam Castano, Head of Global IT Employee Experience, Morningstar

Real-time data for purposeful planning

• Leaders use capacity planning to get a high-level view of how people are staffed across workstreams and optimize resourcing decisions.

• Access to accurate work data and reporting helps the team validate which projects do or don’t connect to business goals.

• With clarity on how upcoming and in-flight work impacts capacity, leaders can have clear, data-backed trade-off discussions with stakeholders.

You don't have a strategy until you also say what you're not doing. Now, we have a process that allows us to say no. And we have stats on why we’re saying no, which helps us drive home the point—we have things that are priorities and things that aren’t.

Katie Dowling, Head of Global Technology Delivery & Operations, Morningstar

Conclusion

Powering smarter growth with structure, clarity, and AI

As Morningstar continues to evolve in a rapidly changing landscape, they’re building a future-ready foundation for innovation. With Asana, teams can work more efficiently and consistently, with select AI-powered workflows that help streamline complex processes, improve prioritization, and accelerate delivery. Morningstar envisions a future where the organization uses AI strategically to enhance productivity, quality, and engagement—with the right guardrails in place. As they scale, Asana and AI Studio will play a critical role in transforming how work gets done: driving smarter decisions, faster execution, and more meaningful impact across the business.

Leveraging Asana and its capabilities have completely transformed the way our team works and the way we work with our stakeholders. Everyone knows the who, what, when, where, why and how—and that’s been a critical component of driving success for us today and building the foundation of our success tomorrow and beyond.

Deirdre Lee, Senior Marketing Manager, Morningstar