Optimum helped a national bakery franchise streamline cross-department collaboration and improve project tracking by transitioning from Monday.com and Excel to a branded, centralized Smartsheet PMO solution.
About the Client
Founded in 1997, the client is the nation’s largest specialty cake company. With over 660 franchised and corporate bakeries across more than 40 U.S. states and Canada, the company is known for its signature Bundt cakes and iconic cream cheese frosting. Driven by a joyful, community-focused brand, more than 90% of its bakeries are women-owned. With $750M+ in sales, the company is on track to hit $1B by 2027.
Business Challenges
As the client grew, managing internal projects and events across multiple departments became increasingly complex. Their reliance on Monday.com, Excel sheets, and manual processes created siloed workflows, made reporting inefficient, and introduced avoidable delays. Optimum uncovered the following key challenges:
- Limited Visibility Across Departments: Teams lacked a centralized view of project progress, timelines, and responsibilities.
- Manual Workarounds: Tracking projects and events required redundant data entry and constant communication across teams.
- Inefficient Scheduling: Without integrated tools, project scheduling lacked alignment and real-time updates.
- Branding Limitations: Existing tools did not support the company’s visual and operational brand guidelines.
- Scalability Issues: Not having a unified platform made scaling operations and enforcing best practices increasingly challenging.
Optimum’s Involvement
To address these inefficiencies, Optimum designed a customized solution that met the client’s operational, branding, and scheduling needs. The approach prioritized ease of use, scalability, and alignment with existing workflows to minimize change management and maximize adoption. Key aspects of the implementation included:
- Smartsheet Implementation: Migrated project tracking and planning from Monday.com and Excel into a standardized PMO solution using Smartsheet.
- Custom Dashboards: Developed centralized dashboards to provide real-time visibility across departments.
- Integrated Calendar App: Implemented a calendar-based scheduling tool to manage project timelines and internal events more efficiently.
- Brand Alignment: Customized visual and process elements to reflect the client’s brand standards.
Project Outcomes and Benefits
The Smartsheet solution delivered meaningful operational improvements and time savings for the client. By reducing manual work, improving visibility, and streamlining collaboration, the platform became a foundation for efficient and scalable project management. Results included:
- 75% Increase in Project Visibility: Centralized dashboards allowed departments to access real-time updates and status tracking.
- 30% Faster Scheduling Processes: Integrated calendar tools streamlined internal event planning and reduced coordination delays.
- 40% Reduction in Manual Communication: Real-time data access in Smartsheet significantly reduced emails and status check-ins.
- System Adopted by 100% of Internal Teams: The branded, scalable solution met usability and governance standards across departments.
- Improved Planning Accuracy by 50%: Standardized processes provided a strong foundation for aligning strategic initiatives with operational execution.
Future Opportunities
Following the success of the initial implementation, the client is positioned to build on this foundation with additional enhancements:
- Resource Management Integration: Adding Resource Management will help align people with projects and enable better workload balancing.
- Strategic Planning Tools: Introducing strategic planning interfaces will support company-wide initiative alignment.
- Data-Driven KPIs: Tracking and visualizing performance metrics within Smartsheet dashboards will help measure success and guide decisions.
About Optimum
Optimum is an award-winning, nationally recognized IT consulting firm serving clients across multiple industries in the US and Canada. We specialize in helping organizations enhance efficiency, overcome project management challenges, and achieve digital transformation through strategic planning, innovative technologies, and streamlined PMO processes.
We offer a comprehensive range of project management solutions and services, including Smartsheet Consulting, Systems Integration, Business Process Optimization and Automation, Business Intelligence (BI), Custom Application Development, and Staff Augmentation.
Reach out today for a complimentary discovery session, and let’s explore the best project management solutions for your needs!
Contact us: info@optimumcs.com | 713.505.0300 | www.optimumcs.com
