How Syneos Health cut meeting time by 40% with Wrike

Welcome back to another edition of Championing Change, where we learn from Wrike users who successfully rolled out the platform to their team, department, or organization. Most of the Wrike super users we’ve chatted with have delivered measured rollouts to smaller numbers of new users. But what happens when you’re onboarding groups of 200-300 new users at a time? 

At Syneos Health, you have Sherrie Besecker bringing a repeatable framework, clear governance, and a willingness to meet every team where they are. As System Solutions Manager at Syneos Health, Sherrie is a long-time Wrike super user. Over the years, our team has had the pleasure of learning from Sherrie about her processes and strategies for both using Wrike and bringing new users on board. 

Today, I’m happy to bring Sherrie’s inspiration for onboarding new users (in groups large and small) to our Championing Change decks. 

Creating a repeatable framework for onboarding teams of all sizes

Syneos Health is a fully integrated biopharmaceutical solutions organization that helps customers accelerate the delivery of critical therapies to patients. As a System Solutions Manager focused on the commercial side of the business, Sherrie supports communications teams spanning marketing, PR, and advertising.

Before 2018, Syneos Health relied on a homegrown project management solution. When the organization made the switch to Wrike, the team was ready. “We were happy to have a solid PM tool,” Sherrie said.

Since then, Wrike has become embedded into the core operating model across communications teams at Syneos. “Wrike is the platform of choice for work management,” Sherrie explained. “It supports everything from strategic initiatives to daily operational work, including intake, triage, approvals, and reporting.” 

What makes the adoption at Syneos Health particularly notable is its scale; Sherrie onboards teams large, small, and everywhere in between. For larger business teams of hundreds of users, Sherrie executes formal rollout plans that include discovery, workflow design, governance alignment, training, and phased go-lives. 

For smaller teams, the implementation is more streamlined, but the foundation stays consistent: clear structure, defined ownership, and measurable outcomes. For Sherrie, that consistency is the key to success while managing adoption across a large organization with a wide variety of needs in each team. 

How learning about team needs sets the foundation for solid adoption

One of the most effective parts of Sherrie’s approach is what happens before Wrike ever gets introduced to a new team.

“Adoption starts with discovery,” she said. “I take time to understand each team’s goals, current workflows, and pain points before introducing Wrike.” When Sherrie initially meets with teams, she spends time on the front end understanding what’s working, what isn’t, and where teams can become more efficient. Rather than presenting Wrike as a mandate, she offers Wrike as a solution to specific challenges the team is already facing.

This approach can also mitigate resistance in the onboarding process. “The initial reaction sometimes includes natural resistance, which is common with any change,” Sherrie noted. Because Sherrie already has a clear picture of the ways Wrike will help that team, as Wrike starts delivering visible results (improving visibility, simplifying collaboration, reducing manual follow-ups), the perception shifts. “What started as hesitation evolved into engagement, with many now viewing Wrike as an essential tool,” she said.

Sherrie also works hand in hand with stakeholders to nail down what a solid minimum viable product looks like for their team’s rollout, then sets measurable goals from there. Sometimes that’s shifting intake into request forms in Wrike, or setting up dashboards to better assess team workloads. And she makes a point of keeping leaders involved the whole way, so expectations remain clear and feedback keeps flowing. 

Cutting meeting time by up to 40%

One of the biggest time-savers Sherrie’s teams have noticed is a real drop in the time they spend in meetings.

“We’ve seen meeting time decrease by 25 -40% because dashboards and real-time updates provide that shared visibility without requiring status calls,” Sherrie said. When meetings do happen, they’re shorter and more focused because everyone already has access to the same information.

This shift becomes possible when Wrike is the single source of truth at Syneos Health. Instead of managing tasks through email threads or disconnected spreadsheets, teams shift into having clear ownership, deadlines, and status updates in one place. “This transparency helps them prioritize effectively, minimize bottlenecks, and improve cross-functional collaboration,” Sherrie explained, “And that in turn, allows teams to focus more on strategic work rather than administrative coordination.” 

Pairing internal and Wrike resources for ongoing learning

Sherrie is also one of the most thorough users of Wrike’s resource ecosystem we’ve ever spoken with. She regularly dives into the Wrike Help Center, explores our blog content, joins our webinars, reads Wrike eBooks and release notes, chats on our Community forum, uses on-demand training materials, and upskills on Wrike Discover. Truly, if it’s a Wrike resource, you can bet Sherrie has her hands on it.

And she doesn’t stop there. She’s created customized internal guides and quick-reference documents, recorded walkthroughs, and designed process playbooks tailored to her teams at Syneos Health. A lot of these tie back to Wrike’s official resources, so users get both internal guidance and easy access to broader platform knowledge.

This kind of investment in enablement is what separates a tool rollout from real, lasting adoption. It’s also what makes Sherrie’s approach scalable: When the next team of 200 users is ready to onboard, her playbook for Wrike adoption has already been built.

Sherrie’s commitment to making sure Wrike is a lifestyle at Syneos Health rather than a forced tool in the tech stack inspires us here on the content team as well! 

Are you ready to get that level of efficiency across your teams? Start a free two-week trial of  Wrike today.