Best Of

I was introduced to Smartsheet by of course by a project management team at work. However once I started to scratch the surface of how to use it the entire lid blew off the box. My head exploded and I understood that my statement to leadership could actually come true "If you can't give us more people then give us tools to help us". I took the Core Path App and began my master plan of putting all of our offline, outside of systems, processes into Smartsheet. This is taking us out of email, excel, power point and thousands of meetings to execute on outside of the seasonal line plan items into one source (Smartsheet) that we can then reconcile with our systems. Everyone is on the same page, everyone knows what the ask is, what the progress is and utilizing the system data and not an offline document, email or meeting note to report out to leadership (which then conflicts with what another team has). I know i'm being dramatic but just putting one process like Late Add/Speed items has changed the game and possibly saved my sanity. My team and my family thanks you.

Now what did I build? We created a work app where each region has visibility of the # of items they can add for a season outside of our standard process. They then enter their request(now standardized) with all the details required for review. The workflow sends it to a global approver who then approves, rejects or communicates with the requestor for clarification. Any and all conversation, documents or information is housed in this one location, no confusion and can be referenced back by all teams. Once approved the product manager, developer, design, merchandising, sourcing, etc. are all notified of the new project. Once a item is created in our system of record (PLM) that item is entered into the request and we utilize data shuttle to bring in all the information across our systems of record to ensure all of our downstream processes are not being executed and is visible in real time. A dashboard for each region allows them to keep track of their items but also to see approved items they may also want to adopt and can request via the app. That is the simple explanation and we are still turning on bells and whistles to enhance but wanted the team to adopt quickly and wanted to ensure we all came on the technology journey together. No comments of overwhelm but only praise at this point. Best 50th birthday present ever and we still have a lot more to come!🎉

We just updated the wording @Darla Brown. Thanks again!