Global Client Case Studies

Client Background

Advance Electric is one of our long-standing clients, engaged with us since the beginning of our company in 2016. They are a rapidly growing electrical contractor serving the Santa Barbara area, including Montecito and Goleta. They specialize in providing innovative electrical solutions through quality materials and superior craftsmanship.

Challenge

Managing employee shifts and accurately tracking work hours were significant challenges for Advance Electric. The manual processes in place led to inefficiencies, errors in payroll, and difficulties in scheduling, especially with the variable workloads typical in electrical contracting. Factors such as emergency repairs, weather-dependent installations, and seasonal fluctuations further complicated shift management.

Solution

To address these challenges, a custom shift management application was developed using Microsoft PowerApps. This solution provided a centralized platform accessible from their mobiles or tablets , allowing employees to log on to their commuting and actual work hours, update the real-time status of the job, directly from jobsites. The application integrated seamlessly with Office 365, storing data in the cloud for real-time access by the administrative team, where they can get the updates through email and MS Teams in case of any changes to their shift timings or sudden unforeseen cancellation of their shifts.

Client’s Background

Southwest Network is a renowned mental and behavioural health service provider based in Greater Phoenix, Arizona. They operate in seven popular facilities and provide integrated mental health and primary care services for adults. Moreover, they specialize in behavioural health therapy and support for youth on an outpatient basis. Southwest Network is about ensuring everyone in the community feels better and happier.

Business Challenges

Generally, employees of Southwest Network travel from their office to different locations, like other branches, rehabilitation centres, and patient facilities. The cost of their travel is reimbursed as a mileage claim. Earlier, they used an Excel spreadsheet to log the hours of the journey, the distance they travelled, and more. Then, they used to submit it to their payroll department monthly. However, this method often resulted in mistakes, such as recording wrong distances or double entries for one trip.

Moreover, these errors led to irregular reimbursement figures, which the payroll department had to check manually, thereby involving much effort. It also caused difficulty for employees to check on the status of their reimbursement requests and for supervisors to efficiently manage approvals. This led to increased delays in the reimbursement process, employee frustration, and administrative burden.  

Solutions Provided

To address Southwest Network's challenges, we provided them with in-depth PowerApps consulting services. We developed a Mileage Reimbursement App, a powerful platform that allows the swift development of custom business applications. This app addressed the unique needs of Southwest Network’s mileage reimbursement process.

The Mileage Reimbursement App is built with different functionalities, using the capabilities of PowerApps, to automate the entire reimbursement process. Here’s how PowerApps enhanced the functionality of the app:

1. Employee Perspective

PowerApps provides a user-friendly interface where employees can log their mileage, view their reimbursement status, and track the progress of reimbursement requests easily. It provides transparency and allows them to manage their reimbursement process efficiently.

2. Supervisor Perspective

PowerApps also provides a dedicated dashboard for supervisors. Here, they can review and approve reimbursement requests from their team members. They can also swiftly assess pending approvals, view reimbursement summaries, and export data for further analysis.

3. Admin Perspective

Administrators can monitor the overall reimbursement process, track open requests, and manage their permissions using this app. They have the flexibility to adjust supervisory assignments and ensure the smooth operation of the app.

4. Payroll Team Perspective

PowerApps simplifies the workload of the payroll team. It automates mileage calculations, reduces errors, and accelerates the reimbursement process. It has built-in controls, powered by PowerApps, that ensure accuracy and compliance with reimbursement policies.

Results

1. The Mileage Reimbursement App, developed by our PowerApps developers, helped them reduce errors and inaccuracies related to manual mileage tracking. It led to more accurate reimbursement calculations.

2. The automation of there imbursement process has eliminated all the tasks performed manually. This way, employees and the payroll team get more time to invest in other tasks.

3. The app delivered transparency throughout the reimbursement process.

Therefore, our PowerApps consultants transformed Southwest Network’s mileage reimbursement process by developing an app that eliminated manual work, improved accuracy, and streamlined approvals. Southwest Network achieved greater efficiency, productivity, and compliance across the organisation, and automated and optimised key workflows using this technology.

Do you want to streamline your business processes? Let SharePoint Designs do that for you. Contact us today and get our PowerApps solutions today and experience the transformation in your organisation’s efficiency and productivity!

About the client

Southwest Network is a behavioral health services provider based in Phoenix, Arizona. They specialize in offering a range of behavioral health and substance abuse treatment services to individuals and families. While Southwest Network is based in Phoenix, they may serve clients throughout Arizona, and possibly in neighboring states.

Southwest Network, being a behavioral health services organization, has a culture to recognize their employees across various locations. They are broadly classified under 5 Pillars viz, People, Service, Quality, Stewardship, Community.  

Challenges

While recognizing and appreciating employees is crucial for maintaining a positive work culture, relying on a manual recognition process can present various challenges. These challenges highlight the importance of adopting more efficient and streamlined methods, such as automated systems or recognition platforms.

Inconsistency

Manual recognition processes are prone to inconsistency due to human error. Different managers may have varying approaches to recognizing employees, leading to an unequal distribution of recognition across the organization.

Delayed Recognition

A manual process often results in delayed recognition. Supervisors may forget to acknowledge achievements in a timely manner, diminishing the impact of the acknowledgment on the employee's motivation and morale.

Limited Documentation

Manual processes typically lack a centralized and organized documentation system. This makes it difficult to track and reference past recognitions, hindering the ability to provide evidence during performance reviews or discussions about career growth.

Administrative Burden

Manual recognition often involves paperwork, email chains, or physical documentation. This can create an administrative burden for both managers and HR personnel, consuming valuable time that could be better spent on strategic initiatives.

Our Solution

Our PowerApps expert, built a custom app without extensive coding, to suit the needs of our client. Below is a general outline for creating a custom PowerApps solution which can be accessed via mobiles as well.

PowerApps for Rewards & Recognition

Define Objectives

Identifying the key objectives of the Rewards and Recognition program is crucial to design the PowerApps solution. Understand the types of recognition, criteria for rewards, and the overall process flow.

User Interface Design

Design an intuitive and user-friendly interface. This app can be used in mobile devices. Separate views for employees, HR Dept; and supervisors.  

Integrate with the organization's authentication system to ensure that only authorized users can access and participate in the Rewards and Recognition platform.

Recognition Submissions

The form captures basic information such as employee name(s), Location, category of recognition, reasons, and period. All employees are allowed to access this form to nominate their colleagues or teams.

Approval Workflow

Integrated approval workflow to ensure that submitted recognitions are reviewed and approved by relevant stakeholders, such as managers or HR, before being officially acknowledged. To ensure transparency in the process, this custom-built solution will display only the location, reasons and period to the Jury for selection process. The app. provides an option to elect winner from the nominations page. Once the winner is chosen, the name of winners is displayed and published as News in the Portal Home Page.

Notification System

Implemented a notification system to recognise / congratulate employees when they receive recognition. The supervisors are also notified that their team has been recognised with awards.

Mobile Accessibility

Optimize the PowerApps for mobile devices to enable easy access and recognition submissions from anywhere within the organization. By following these steps, we can help you create a customized PowerApps that streamlines the Rewards and Recognition process, promoting a positive and appreciative culture within your organization.

About Our Client

Johnson & Johnson is the world’s largest and most broadly based healthcare company, they are committed to using their reach and size for good. They strive to improve access and affordability, create healthier communities, and put a healthy mind, body, and environment within reach of everyone, everywhere.

Every day, more than 130,000 employees across the world are blending heart, science, and ingenuity to profoundly change the trajectory of health for humanity.

Business Case

The client required an end-to-end application to track and manage the work orders and associated consultants. They also wanted a performance dashboard to track and monitor their progress based on timeframes and/or consultants. 

Project Challenges

• No existing system in place to manage and monitor contracts, work orders, or consultants. They were using excel sheets.
• No real-time tracking of the lifecycle of consultants or contracts.
• Lack of consolidated reports or dashboards to track the history of consultants and work orders. 

How did we help?

We developed a fool proof business app from a canvas in Microsoft Power Apps with data from various SharePoint lists. We created different forms to create and assign work orders to different contractors, capture the estimation from contractors, power automate flow to capture the approval/rejection status, and the lifecycle of the work order. The power automate flow is also customized to send reminders in case of delays in approving the work order.

We also developed a performance dashboard to view different charts based on different filters like timeframe or consultant. We also provided an option to Print to PDF in power apps to enable printing of the registered outcomes of a work order. 

Business Benefits

• Everyday activities are streamlined now.
• Increase in productivity.
• Automated tasks across markets and regions.
• Reduction in human error.
• Significant time saving.
• Approvals using teams and emails.
• Accessible in mobile.

About Our Client

Based in India, Magick Woods Export Pvt. Ltd. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Magick Woods Ltd., Canada - one of the top manufacturers and pioneers of quality bath vanities and kitchen cabinets. Some of their customers include Home Depot, Lowes, Menards, Rona, and Home Hardware.

Project Challenges

• Lack of a quality check process at the end of the production line to ensure delivery of products that meet world-class standards
• An ineffective manual tracking system involving QC inspectors - due to the unavailability of a defect identification system
• No one-stop report repository in place for the management to review the number of open defects and statuses of defects

Our Solution

 SharePoint Designs developed a QC form to update the defects in the system instantly. Equipped with a camera feature, the QC Inspector could upload or capture the images of defective items. The data stored in the back-end could be used for further analysis. Furthermore, the form could be easily accessed through handheld devices like mobiles or tabs. Using Power BI, a summarised report of the defects and their status was made available for quick reviews.

 Our experience in working with different MS applications like Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI played a major role in the quick roll-out.

Business Benefits

• Power to instantly reject defective products and eliminating any of their chances of reaching the end customer
• Vast reduction of worker hours involved in updating, correcting, and verifying the documents
• Ability of the QC form to captures the total defects recorded in a day
• Easy-to-interpret Power BI-based reports that facilitates a smooth management review process

About Our Client

Advance Electric is a US-based specialized provider of commercial, industrial, and residential electrical solutions. A fast-growing company, they offer cutting-edge electrical solutions based on high-quality materials and experienced craftsmanship.

Project Challenges

• An outdated invoice management system that was unable to cope with its emerging businesses
• Manual tracking and processes of vendor invoices that involved extracting information from hundreds of e-mails
• Failure to update the right order number in the invoice due to time-consuming error-prone processes

Our Solution

During the project's exploratory stage, SharePoint Designs identified the common fields in the invoices. Then, we leveraged MS SharePoint Forms to design a simpler form that captures all the relevant fields. Using Power Apps, we provided a streamlined list of the e-mails that were sorted by date, with a separate field to showcase customer name, address, and order details. Finally, after submission - the documents were generated and automatically saved in a unique folder.  

Thanks to our MS SharePoint expertise, the client could quickly retrieve the right document at the right time while easily reviewing the updated fields highlighted.

Business Benefits

• Automated tracking of e-mails and invoices for error-free and simplified payment processes
• Significant reduction of hours spent on repetitive tasks like searching for order details and sorting out e-mails
• Minimal training required for the workforce to handle the invoice tracking process