How UCLA Anderson Is Saving Hundreds of Hours of Manual Processes By Setting Up 250+ Automations Inside of SmartSuite

Perry Poussard, Program Development Manager @ UCLA Anderson School of Management

250+
automations per month
200 Hours / month
Time saved
Increased Productivity
by using automations campus wide
'We were brought in mainly because the LMS system that UCLA was using was being transferred. So, we were using Moodle, and we were moving over to Canvas, and what we were tracking was which course sites we have migrated over from the old system to the new system. We realized we needed to be tracking a lot more of this information and getting this information from other teams, but not only getting the information from other teams, making sure they had access to it as well.''
Perry Poussard, Program Development Manager @ UCLA Anderson School of Management

The Problem

Struggled to track course related information across different platforms

UCLA Anderson had to migrate their learning management system (LMS) from Moodle over to Canvas.

The problem that Perry faced in his newly founded instructional design and learning experience team was that their processes were too inefficient and time-consuming.

His team struggled to track course information across the 200+ courses his educational institution had each quarter, and they had to manage all of that data via Google Sheets, which was not only time-consuming but also siloed.

Instead of advancing the curriculum, they were stuck migrating information manually via Google Sheets and Outlook.

When they were searching for a solution, not many project management solutions were willing to go through the third-party processes that an educational institution needs to go through to use a 3rd party solution.

A bit of legal context: Educational institutions like UCLA Anderson face restrictions in using project management tools like Airtable and SmartSuite due to compliance requirements with federal laws like FERPA, which protect student data privacy.

Perry and his team had to ensure that any third-party service provider adhered to strict contractual obligations and technical standards to safeguard personally identifiable information (PII) from educational records, as outlined by FERPA regulations.

Q1

The Solution

Automating all the grinding tasks with SmartSuite

SmartSuite emerged as the ideal solution for Perry and Margery not only because we accommodated the unique red tape and security protocols but also because they were able to automate a lot of their processes with SmartSuite’s no-code automation builder.

Our team maintained open communication with Perry for his unique use case, quickly addressed feature requests, and provided them with a user-friendly interface that simplified the product adoption for the tech-savvy faculty and staff champions.

Perry set up SmartSuite to be the one place for everybody in his team and faculty to have access to the course information.

Q2

The Results

250+ Automations, 200 hours per month time saved

As a result of setting up 250+ automations in SmartSuite, Perry reduced the required manual work from hundreds of hours down to minutes.

One of his tasks was to manually send out emails to course leaders, which took him about 2 working days; he now does it in about 15 minutes.

Perry was able to streamline a large range of their internal processes, such as FERPA compliance for teachers, improved cross-department collaboration, and turned SmartSuite into a central tool for operational efficiency.

Q3

Last year, we did a webinar with them, going over how they are leveraging SmartSuite to tackle information silos and enhance collaboration across diverse teams:

Download Customer Story PDF

Company Name

UCLA Anderson

Industry

Higher Education

Team

Instructional Design & Learning Experience

Region

US

Company size

Enterprise

Pain point

Existing processes were too inefficient and time-consuming

Products replaced

Airtable

About the company

The school offers MBA, Post Graduate Program for Executives, Financial Engineering, Business Analytics, and PhD degrees.

Website

https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/