Case Studies

🔴 The Challenge

Inventory discrepancies were costing the company time and money. Floor managers at each location maintained their own spreadsheets, which were emailed to the central office every Friday. By the time the data was consolidated, it was already outdated.

• No real-time visibility into inventory across locations
• Manual data entry leading to frequent errors
• Weekly reporting lag causing over-ordering and stockouts
• No mobile access for floor staff doing physical counts

🟢 The Solution

We built a custom Power App that replaced the spreadsheet process entirely. Floor staff use tablets to scan items, update counts, and log incoming shipments — all in real time. The data flows into a central Dataverse database that all three locations share.

We paired the app with Power Automate flows that send automatic alerts when inventory drops below minimum thresholds, notify purchasing when reorder points are triggered, and generate consolidated weekly reports automatically.

The team also got a Power BI dashboard showing real-time inventory levels across all locations, reorder status, and historical trends.

📊 The Results

Metric	Before	After
Inventory accuracy	~82%	97%+
Weekly reporting time	6+ hours	Automated (0 hours)
Stockout incidents	8-10/month	1-2/month
Over-ordering waste	~$4,200/month	~$800/month

The system paid for itself in less than three months. Floor staff adopted the app within two weeks, and management now has confidence in their inventory data for the first time.

🔴 The Challenge

The nonprofit tracked donations in one system, program outcomes in spreadsheets, and grant spending in a separate accounting tool. When board meetings or donor reports came due, staff spent weeks pulling data from each source and building presentations manually.

• Data scattered across three systems with no unified view
• Quarterly board reports took 2+ weeks to compile
• Donor impact reports were generic because creating customized ones was too time-consuming
• Grant reporting was stressful — meeting foundation requirements with manual data pulls felt risky
• No self-service access — the executive director couldn't check numbers without asking finance

🟢 The Solution

We started with Power BI, connecting all three data sources into a single reporting hub. The dashboard gives leadership a real-time view of donations, program metrics, and grant spending — all in one place.

We then built a SharePoint site as the nonprofit's internal knowledge hub, with a document library for all donor-facing materials, a grant tracking list with automated deadline reminders via Power Automate, and a board meeting portal where members can access dashboards, agendas, and meeting materials.

Finally, we created a set of Power BI report templates that the development team can use to generate customized donor impact reports in minutes, not days.

📊 The Results

Metric	Before	After
Board report prep time	2+ weeks	2 hours
Donor report creation	3-4 hours each	15 minutes each
Missed grant deadlines	2-3/year	0
Executive access to financials	By request only	Real-time, self-service

The board chair called it "the best investment we've made in operations in five years." The development team now spends their time building donor relationships instead of wrangling spreadsheets.

🔴 The Challenge

The firm relied on a patchwork of manual processes: client onboarding involved 12 steps across three departments, none of which were automated. Employee time tracking was done in spreadsheets emailed weekly. Project status updates happened in Monday morning meetings that ran 90 minutes because no one had visibility into progress during the week.

• Client onboarding took 2+ weeks with frequent steps falling through the cracks
• Time tracking was inconsistent and payroll reconciliation took hours
• No project visibility between weekly status meetings
• Team burnout from administrative overhead stealing time from billable work
• New hires were overwhelmed by undocumented tribal knowledge processes

🟢 The Solution

We designed a comprehensive automation strategy using Power Automate and Microsoft Teams as the backbone.

Client Onboarding Automation: A Power Automate flow now manages the entire onboarding process. When a new client is entered into the system, the flow automatically creates a Teams channel, provisions a SharePoint folder structure, assigns onboarding tasks to the right people, and sends status updates to the account manager at each milestone.

Time Tracking in Teams: We built a lightweight Power App inside Microsoft Teams where employees log time directly in the tool they already use. Entries flow into a central Dataverse table, and a weekly Power Automate flow generates a reconciliation report for payroll — automatically.

Project Visibility Dashboard: A Power BI dashboard embedded in Teams gives everyone real-time visibility into project status, utilization rates, and upcoming milestones.

📊 The Results

Metric	Before	After
Client onboarding time	2+ weeks	4 days
Missed onboarding steps	15-20% of clients	<1%
Payroll reconciliation	4 hours/week	30 minutes/week
Monday meeting duration	90 minutes	30 minutes
Administrative overhead	~25% of work week	~10% of work week

The firm's managing partner estimated the automations saved the equivalent of 1.5 full-time employees' worth of administrative work — time that's now spent on billable client work.