Landscape Development, Inc., with over 40 years of experience, specializes in designing, constructing, protecting, and maintaining landscaping systems for clients. Despite being the market leader in this domain, their dependency on paper-based, conventional, and non-standardized processes was the biggest obstacle to workflow efficiency, collaboration, documentation, and compliance. Certainly, they were looking for a solution that could effectively address these challenges while improving their operational efficiency and competitiveness.
Curating green, sustainable, designer landscapes for clients, Landscape Development, Inc. had to collaborate with multiple clients, suppliers, vendors, and employees simultaneously. However, the lack of effective and two-way communication channels between the employees, teams, and management was the biggest challenge that hindered the company’s growth.
“Prior to using BizPortals 365, we didn’t really have any standardized processes. We were using Microsoft Excel pretty much for everything. Everybody had their own spreadsheets, and each division had its own process. The way we looked at data was something different.” Says Annie Wright, Marketing Director, Landscape Development, Inc.
The paper-based processes and spreadsheets they previously used weren’t adequate to handle the number of forms, contracts, and compliance documentation they dealt with.
Furthermore, they were challenged by Helix, the internal system used by the estimation department, which had a complex and time-consuming process to gather data from multiple sources like a CRM.
So, it was clear that the intended solution must replace manual and time-consuming processes, integrate with their existing systems, and be a customizable digital platform facilitating all stakeholders to communicate and collaborate effectively.
“I think of the intranet and CRM is just like a living system and it always needs work as people are requesting different things (customizations) and updates to the forms, and process flows. And team BizPortals demonstrated their excellence when it comes to customer support and maintenance. They are very attentive, making quick modifications.”
Every client is unique in their own way, and customizing a solution that meets their unique business requirements is always challenging. Recognizing their need for a transformative solution, a SharePoint-based intranet was ideal for creating a collaborative, productive, and scalable platform for them to work on.
Experts from BizPortals Solutions conducted a thorough requirement analysis and followed a user-centric approach to outline a robust intranet for Landscape Development.
Highlights of BizPortals 365’s features tailored to address the specific challenges of Landscape Development Inc.
We created a dedicated widget for employees to easily enter, edit, access, and automate key forms, reducing manual data entry and errors. Also, the ability to create custom fields allows them to customize and digitize their forms as needed.
According to Annie, ‘Automated processes are great at reducing human errors. In the daily safety procedures, the spreadsheets that we use to run have a lot of formulas and user errors happening in the field. From the field staff’s viewpoint, automating this process was quite helpful. Now they just enter their name, and it auto-populates their employee ID number, division, manager, and a lot more, which they had to fill out manually before. Definitely, that was a major advancement for us in error reduction.’
With SharePoint’s powerful workflow capabilities, we streamlined complex approval processes, enabling forms to move through various stages more quickly.
Certainly, standardizing procedures, forms, and the data collection process was a remarkable decision. When asked about how streamlined workflows have improved the productivity equation within the organization, Annie, who is currently working on check request forms, says, ‘Definitely, there has been a lot of time going into processing check request forms and producing the daily safety reports manually. However, just having the required information from people who are filling in the form has saved a lot of time in accounting or activating contracts. Now the person on the receiving end doesn’t have to go tracking down all that information, maintaining productivity and workflow efficiency.’
Incorporating a multitude of employee engagement features, BizPortals 365 acted as a virtual water cooler for the landscaping company.
Creating dedicated department sites revamped intra-departmental collaboration by streamlining communication, workflows, and resources, resulting in enhanced productivity and better decision-making.
While discussing data accessibility in SharePoint, Annie shared her perspective: ‘All the data is right here in one place. People complain about SharePoint and OneDrive about data loss, but you just have to organize the SharePoint pages (sites) or create quick links, and you will be able to find the information they are looking for.’
Certainly, the editable grid feature, coupled with meta tagging and keyword integration, has proven highly advantageous in organizing document repositories, and improving data accessibility.
BizPortals 365 laid out a comprehensive approach to smoothly integrate the existing CRM with the SharePoint environment, ensuring easy synchronization, seamless data mapping, and careful management of permissions and access controls.
‘The integration of CRM and Power BI functionality has been amazing. We call it our pipeline. By taking all of our Helix data, it gives clear visibility of what sales are coming in or seeing projections on what we have to achieve this year and even in the next year.’ says Annie.
“Using SharePoint and having BizPortals as a partner has elevated our organization in standardizing many processes within our company, ultimately increasing the overall productivity. It is secure, user-friendly, and due to the subscription-based model it is budget-friendly too. Implementation was smooth, and we were successful in transitioning people away from spreadsheets. We would like to give it a 5-star rating for its ability to save time, provide data accessibility, reduce errors, and enhance employee engagement. ”
