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Problem
Disconnected Systems and Manual Processes
Penn Dental Medicine, one of the nation’s oldest university-affiliated dental schools, faced operational challenges managing academic and clinical workflows within the University of Pennsylvania’s integrated campus ecosystem. The workflows were high-stakes but manually executed—and it showed.
Before SmartSuite, Rachel and her team juggled spreadsheets, email chains, and scattered systems to manage their daily operations. There was no single source of truth. Important event data, speaker submissions, and compliance documentation were fragmented, and tracking progress meant manually piecing together updates from multiple locations.
The communication burden was especially taxing. Each speaker required a tailored message, a unique form link, and individualized tracking. Abstract submissions from students often came with confusion, leading to resubmissions, schedule changes, and administrative overhead.
These inefficiencies didn’t just cost time; they created friction at every turn. Rachel recognized that their current tools weren’t just insufficient—they were holding the team back from scaling impact.
Q1
Solution
One Relational System for Every Workflow
Determined to find a better way, Rachel embarked on a search for a platform that could bring clarity and cohesion to their operations. It needed to be powerful yet flexible, capable of relational structuring, affordable in the context of academia, and usable by a small team without dedicated IT support.She landed on SmartSuite.
From the ground up, Rachel architected a tailored solution within SmartSuite to meet their needs:
- Event Management: Events became central records, linked to speakers, venues, ADA SERP compliance details, and logistical tasks.
- Speaker Coordination: Through integrations with Fillout and Zapier, role-based forms were automatically generated and assigned. This removed the need for manual emails and ensured that speakers received only the fields relevant to their role.
- Communication Templates: Using SmartSuite’s Communication Center, Rachel and her team streamlined outreach to speakers with templated messages, reducing friction and eliminating errors from manual copying.
- Abstract Submissions: Students submitting abstracts now received auto-generated PDFs via SmartSuite’s document designer. These confirmations clarified expectations and minimized post-submission confusion.
Q2
Results
Efficiency, Accuracy, and Daily Dependence
Since implementing SmartSuite, the transformation has been dramatic. What once took hours of manual labor is now handled in seconds. The system has scaled with the team's needs and matured into a mission-critical platform that touches every aspect of their work.
- Over 390 speaker-event records have been tracked in a single year.
- 80+ upcoming engagements are already organized within the system.
- Automated form generation and communication have reclaimed hours from repetitive tasks.
- Abstract-related confusion from students has dropped significantly due to clearer confirmation workflows.
Rachel’s manager now has on-demand visibility. Her teammates can navigate SmartSuite independently to access the data they need. And the system itself has proven stable, scalable, and surprisingly approachable for a small, non-technical team.
SmartSuite didn’t just save time. It gave the team back their mental bandwidth, letting them focus on quality education and strategic growth instead of chasing links, copy-pasting emails, and fixing data inconsistencies.
For UPenn Dental CDE, SmartSuite is no longer a project. It's a platform. A backbone. A quiet engine powering an exceptional educational experience—and positioning Rachel and her team as true operational innovators.
Q3
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