Problem
Breaking Silos to Boost Studio Efficiency
A creative studio known for blending strategic insight with bold creative execution delivers marketing campaigns that create impactful brand experiences. But behind the scenes, the team was managing operations through a fragmented collection of tools—FileMaker for time tracking, Trello for project management, and spreadsheets for reporting—leading to major inefficiencies across departments.
Timecards submitted through Harvest lacked proper linkage to projects or employees once routed into FileMaker, resulting in duplicate entries and misaligned data. Project assignments in Trello provided no centralized visibility, forcing teams to cross-reference multiple systems just to verify responsibilities and timelines. Core processes like approvals and rollups were managed manually in spreadsheets, which were prone to formula errors and human oversight.
Without a single source of truth, departments operated in silos, and operational leaders were frequently tasked with resolving discrepancies in hours, rates, and billing. The lack of automation and audit trails made it nearly impossible to scale operations without introducing additional manual work.
Q1
Solution
Unified Systems for Accurate, Scalable Ops
The CIO and Head of Operations led a strategic transition to SmartSuite, consolidating time tracking, project management, and approvals into a unified system of record. Key improvements included:
Centralized Time Management: All timecard data from Harvest is now routed directly into SmartSuite via API, where entries are automatically linked to the correct employee and project using built-in automations.
Employee-Project Linking Layer: A dedicated “Employee Project Hours” table serves as a smart aggregator, linking time entries only when relevant. This created clean, structured relationships to support more accurate and meaningful reporting.
Automated Rollups & Audits: Custom automations detect and create missing links between records, enabling real-time tracking of hours worked versus hours estimated—all displayed directly within SmartSuite dashboards.
Reliable Data for Billing: By embedding rollup logic and simplified formulas into SmartSuite, the studio reduced calculation errors and now supports billing, payroll, and forecasting with greater confidence and efficiency.
Operational Efficiency: Project managers and leadership can now access up-to-date work summaries across teams without toggling between tools or reconciling data manually in spreadsheets.
Q2
Results
Trusted Data, Seamless Scaling
SmartSuite has become the operational backbone for the creative studio’s time, task, and billing systems. The platform now manages:
- Over 30,000 timecard records across more than 6,000 project-employee combinations
- Real-time automation of task-to-time relationships with less than a 5-minute lag
- Over 95% alignment between planned and actual hours for each employee on each project
- Zero duplicated entries in the last 60 days, even with high-volume weekly imports via API
- Full consolidation of previously separate tracking tools into one intelligent, permission-based platform
Today, timecards are reviewed and approved seamlessly, data accuracy is restored, and the team can scale operations with confidence. Reporting that once required hours of manual effort now happens instantly—with built-in audit trails to ensure accountability.
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