Automated Program Management Solution

Automation and reporting for project tasks and emails with a large stakeholder audience.

Summary

A group of three RedCloud Consultants encountered the challenge of managing a multi-year, enterprise-wide transformation project that involved over 120 client stakeholders from various departments. To address this, they collaborated with the Digital Solutions team to develop a solution leveraging SharePoint, Power Automate, and Power BI. The final solution was implemented in approximately 100 hours over a span of three months, resulting in substantial time and effort savings for the RedCloud team.

The Situation

A RedCloud team responsible for planning a large ERP implementation had to manage relationships, tasks, and deliverables for more than 120 different stakeholders using an entirely manual process.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by the amount of effort this required, they reached out to RedCloud's Digital Solutions team for help with a solution capable of monitoring deadlines, sending automated email notifications/reminders, automatically creating tasks in the SharePoint List, serving as their project plan and reporting out on the Status of the Project Tasks and the team's output within a Power BI Report.

The Approach

To address these challenges, we designed a comprehensive system that leverages three SharePoint Lists, five Power Automate Flows, and one Power BI Report.

Our solution streamlines the team’s workflow by automating email communications - triggered by actions within SharePoint Lists. These automations allow our RedCloud team the ability to:

1. Select from multiple email templates and provide the dynamic details to render into the automated email

2. Review their draft email before sending individualized emails to a large audience

3. Have scheduled reminder emails go out based on pre-determined Due Dates that have been set

4. Create a task in the Project Plan with the relevant metadata

5. Monitor a shared mailbox for replies to the automated emails, and attach the latest reply to the Task that reply is associated with in the Project Plan.

Our Power BI Report then provides the team with a clear summary of the Project's Task Status, as well as metrics on automated email volume, average turnaround times to complete the tasks and filtering/drill-down capabilities. By visualizing these metrics, we helped the team quantify the value our solution was bringing and created bandwidth for the RedCloud team to spend more time interfacing with their many stakeholders.

Lastly, we worked with the RedCloud team to brainstorm a roadmap of future enhancements. We hope this solution will augment its capabilities over time and be easier to scale to other areas of the Client's organization.

The Impact

Introducing automation and reporting has transformed the RedCloud team’s workflow. The automated email system has reduced manual effort, ensured no tasks are forgotten/overlooked, and significantly improved response times. The Power BI Report provides the Client with an easy and intuitive readout of 1) how the Project is going, 2) how much our solution contributes, and 3) how much the RedCloud team can get done each week.

Our RedCloud Team members are optimistic about the tool’s potential, citing improved efficiency and confidence in timely finishing deliverables. Our solution has positioned our team to more easily show and measure their value to their client, sparking enthusiasm from the Client to scale this solution to other areas of their business.