Homecare Homebase enhances campaign visibility and marketing efficiency with the Smartsheet Platform

Since 1999, Homecare Homebase has been serving the technology needs of the growing home care and hospice industry. With a comprehensive platform and a range of services, the company takes away the administrative and operational burden, provides visibility into key metrics, and gives home-based care providers more time to focus on patients. 

Easy and real-time access to all creative assets and guidelines 

Homecare Homebase's marketing team engages with its clientele through a diverse range of events and campaigns showcasing what the company has to offer, and how its services can help improve patient outcomes. The team sought a solution that could provide better access to information and easier task management.

With a lot of creative and educational content floating around, people at Homecare Homebase needed an easy, reliable way to find what they need. So the marketing team moved and categorized all its assets and guidelines into Brandfolder. “Now, we have a web-based brandbook with a live URL in Brandfolder,” says Sara Cook, Director of Brand and Marketing Operations at Homecare Homebase. There is an internal brand portal that is accessible to its employees, and an external version where public collections can be accessed by anybody outside the company. Both contain the latest information and assets available.

“Brandfolder has become our single source of truth. We can search our assets with keywords, which makes it very user-friendly. We also send automatic email updates to the owners to make sure that everything is up to date,” says Cook.

Then whenever there’s a newer version of a logo or an asset, the marketing team can just replace it and anybody who clicks on the live link will immediately see the new information. “Previously, many employees would download a PDF of our Brand Standards, keep it on their computer, and never go back to see if there was a new version. Now they can just go on the online Brandguide and get it from there,” says Cook. By storing its latest assets and branding guidelines in Brandfolder, Homecare Homebase has ensured that no branding update gets lost in the shuffle. 

Simplified workflow and visibility for requesters 

When employees don’t find what they need on Brandfolder, and require something new to be created, then they can use a request intake form that the marketing team set up. “I didn’t want to bog people down looking at a million questions to fill in their request. So we use conditional logic in our marketing intake sheet to trigger follow-up questions relevant to given responses,” says Cook. “For example, the form won’t have the same questions if they are asking for a case study production or going to a trade show.” 

A portal has also been set up showcasing a Dynamic View of the marketing requests so that requestor can see the progress of their requests. Dynamic View enables different views for admins and users, so requesters get a more concise dashboard of all their requests. Requesters will see only the columns that are appropriate for them to see, like their name, the project title, who it's assigned to, or estimated due date. And they can also quickly reach out with a question on a certain project.

With lots of events on the marketing calendar, as well as different sheets and different reports regarding marketing projects, the team wanted to give an overview of what they were doing to everyone on the team. For that, Cook built two main WorkApps: one for marketing operations, and one for budget.

“It’s now really clear and easy for anyone to quickly find relevant information. WorkApps are easily accessible on mobile devices which keeps the team updated on the go,” she shares. 

Streamlined processes to deliver value quicker 

Like most marketing teams, the one at Homecare Homebase has to juggle a lot of different projects and requests at any given time, which used to be difficult to keep track of. “Before, people would stop by an office or send an email or private message with their request. We really needed a better process to make sure that nothing fell through the cracks, and that we assigned the projects appropriately and followed them through to completion,” recalls Cook. “I wanted to rely on Smartsheet to keep every event, task, request, and asset organized.” 

With WorkApps, the team can group pages, sheets, and dashboards together by subject. “It turned out to be a complete game-changer for us,” she shares. Once a request has been assigned and the team wants to take action, they can track everything through project sheets within Smartsheet. 

For Cook, one of the key things about WorkApps is that it keeps everything within one window that you can edit directly. “Previously, I couldn’t see all projects in one place and had to go to source sheets for edits, which added many steps before I could update a project status. But on WorkApps, it just keeps our set of pages on the left-hand side. I can click on one to open in the same window, where I can edit, make changes, and view the entire sheet in one place. It's a lot quicker.”

Thanks to their streamlined marketing intake and request process, the marketing team has also become more efficient at processing requests. Requests get automatically assigned to the appropriate person based on the type of output needed, and information filled out in the form would flow directly into the marketing sheet for the team to respond to. “With these automations set up, our lives are much easier,” says Cook.

Finally, once a project is done, the final asset gets uploaded from Smartsheet directly to Brandfolder. “Within the Smartsheet attachment, you can just select an option from that attachment that says upload to Brandfolder, and you can choose what collection to put it in, any tags that you want it to have, and it immediately goes over to Brandfolder,” explains Cook. “So it's quite a seamless integration.”

With new, automated workflows, dashboards, and views, Homecare Homebase has brought more transparency, ownership, and productivity to its team.

“Smartsheet really helps our marketing team ensure no request falls through the cracks and deliver value to other departments faster and more meticulously, ultimately, benefitting the caretakers and their patients,” concludes Cook.