Specialty1 Partners (SP1) reached out to Optimum due to the increasing administrative and management effort required to intake, process, and onboard new practices. The lack of a centralized business application to manage the onboarding process placed a significant strain on the SP1 staff from time and administrative task management standpoint.
Previously, there were a small team working in the business development department in conjunction with Operations, Legal, HR, and others. The process required the construction and transmission of manual updates between departments which has been tedious, inconsistent, and time consuming. The organization was using an amalgamation of Salesforce, Box, and the Microsoft suite to collect information, but all data had to be manually transferred between any systems which introduced additional effort and potential for error. The previous system was not seen as sustainable nor scalable for continued growth and threatens to increase organizational churn if not streamlined. Additionally, there was very little visibility on Business Development pipeline and in-progress efforts and a lack of insights being generated from the tremendous amount of data being acquired.
Optimum began the engagement by facilitating several workshops to understand and align on the current state process and design the future state process. A significant portion of this process and gaining alignment from Specialty1 on what standards should be in place and where flexibility should exist to permit special circumstances. Special consideration was taken during the development process to focus on Document Control, increasing accessibility of information to the Potential Seller, and improving transparency to other departments within Specialty1.
Once the detailed business requirements and user stories were documented and verified, Optimum utilized the Smartsheet platform as well as some of the Smartsheet premier apps, such as Control Center, to design and develop the standardized Project Plan and other related standard templates for the evaluation, acquisition, and onboarding processes. After the first set of deliverables were developed, it was imperative to get the solution into the hands of the client to provide the client with the opportunity to verify the user needs, gain internal alignment and provide more punctuated feedback on how the solution should be modified to meet their needs. Based on the feedback received, Optimum developed the remaining of the solution components, conducted final user acceptance testing, provided user and admin training, and successfully rolled the solution out to the client team. Optimum worked closely with the Specialty1 team to meet requested needs and remain within the boundaries of Smartsheet so that future solution scalability would not be negatively impacted. Through this more interactive process, Optimum delivered a successful solution, gained the client business users’ buy-in, and provided interactive solution training and eased change management burden within the organization.
Optimum, in collaboration with Specialty1, successfully developed a new partner onboarding process which leverages Smartsheet Control Center to streamline the intake of information, tracking of progress, and increased transparency between departments and potential partners.
What was once captured across a multiple of systems and required extensive manual effort, is now largely captured in a single, Cloud-based solution which streamlines the capture and dissemination of data. Automating and linking information to the appropriate locations and reducing resource burden while improving scalability for the entire organization. Specialty1 is most excited about the clarity that a standardized process provides, the ease of which data can be captured and leveraged, and the increased efficiency of their operations.
