ADP teams with Smartsheet to drive innovation

Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) is a global provider of cloud-based human capital management solutions that integrate human resources, payroll, talent, time, tax, and benefits administration. 

To support its strategic goal of giving internal and external clients the best possible experience, ADP leverages Smartsheet to manage hundreds of projects and give managers and senior leaders deep visibility into the status of each project. “We’re very client-focused, and we want to ensure our team members have the right tools in place to deliver the best solutions to our clients,” says Alex Berman, senior manager, business operations at ADP. 

“We’re continually looking to better serve them by streamlining our associates’ efforts and empowering them to maximize their time and resources. Smartsheet helps us accomplish that goal.” ADP also uses Smartsheet to drive collaboration. “We’re a complex organization with many different functions,” says Anabela Sarti, vice president, global commercial operations, ADP.  “We win as one organization, not as an individual team, so collaboration is a critical piece of our success.”

Before adopting Smartsheet across their groups, ADP’s National Account Services and sales and marketing teams used a combination of email, spreadsheet software, and various project management tools to track projects. “This created a fractured environment when looking to collaborate across the organization,” Berman says. Similarly, ADP’s commercial operations team used different project management and messaging tools to communicate about projects and key milestones. “We could be managing client events, implementing new tools, or bringing new products to market. All of these things are different, and the support behind each is different. This brings complexity to our team,” says Sarti. “It became increasingly important that we had a solution that was flexible, our single source of truth and customizable to meet each project’s needs.” 

Tracking hundreds of projects with Smartsheet

After evaluating different project management platforms, ADP’s project management team decided to leverage Smartsheet. “Smartsheet allowed us to do everything we wanted to do with the speed and customization needed,” says Sarti. “It's not a one size fits all solution. It can be built to meet whatever our needs are.”

Every day, project managers in the ADP national accounts and global commercial operations teams track hundreds of projects through templates built in Smartsheet Control Center. Each project has real-time information schedules, deadlines, and project owners. “Every time a project is kicked off, a project manager gets access to a toolkit with a series of sheets, reports and dashboards that allow us to customize that experience for the project,” Sarti says. The company’s national accounts team uses Control Center and Microsoft Power Automate for Smartsheet, which enables the creation of automated workflows between Smartsheet and other apps. “We use Control Center for every single project,” Berman says. “We have more than 200 active projects, and each one has a toolkit. Power Automate helps us customize the experience within Smartsheet automatically, based on the team you're on.” ADP uses workflow automation in Smartsheet to automatically trigger alerts to remind project managers about milestones and present the updated status of each project.

In addition, ADP uses Smartsheet to deliver project dashboards and reports to internal clients and executives. The national accounts team, for example, builds dashboards that are accessible through a quick link automatically sent to project managers and leaders. “Now, instead of trying to navigate through multiple spreadsheets and emails to find information, employees have everything they need about a project in real time, including resources, budgets, and potential project roadblocks and escalations,” Berman says.

Sarti and her team also use Smartsheet Control Center to create and deliver different dashboards that pull real-time project data from each toolkit. Sarti provides updated dashboards for project teams and executives. “The dashboards help people visualize data that’s important to them without needing to access all the underlying data and project details that might not matter,” says Sarti. “Because the information is automatically updated in Smartsheet, it has eliminated the manual work of gathering information from various data sources and creating presentations for project and executive updates.”

Helping employees collaborate

With Smartsheet, ADP has standardized and centralized project management data across the national accounts and global commercial operations teams. By consolidating information, ADP can better support collaboration across the organization. “Smartsheet helps our group innovate because it gives us one platform instead of many,” Berman says. “We needed a way to get our employees on the same page and moving in the same direction, while also preserving the uniqueness of each client engagement. Smartsheet provides that capability.”

Smartsheet also enables more flexibility, which helps each team better support clients. 

“I love how much we can achieve through Smartsheet,” says Sarti. “It's allowed us to be creative and customize the experience to a specific project through dashboards, reports, and sheets. We're able to easily serve up exactly what the client needs in real time.”

Better project visibility and access to real-time data  

ADP has deeper visibility into the status of hundreds of projects because of the dashboards and reports available to project managers and executives. “With Smartsheet, we can consolidate all our initiatives and projects and better scope everything, so nothing is missing,” says Sarti. “We can see if a project is running behind, for example, and we can talk about risks and how to mitigate them based on factual data. This makes it much easier for us to focus on the right things.” With real-time reporting, leaders can now see the current details of each project. “Previously, we were pulling data from different tools and the information could quickly become outdated once it was published,” says Sarti. “Now, when our business leaders click on a report or a dashboard, they have the confidence that they’re getting the latest data.”

More time to take on additional projects 

Because Smartsheet has helped reduce the amount of manual effort necessary to get project details and reports, ADP teams spend less time providing project updates to leaders. 

“All our project managers are reporting less manual work and a better overall experience because of Smartsheet dashboards and reports,” says Berman. “Additionally, project managers no longer have to spend 2-3 hours a week creating presentations. Those hours saved can be refocused on more strategic efforts.”

By spending less time building reports and managing projects, ADP project managers are more productive and can focus on high value work. “Because we don’t have to rely on manual tasks, our project managers have each taken on an additional project,” Sarti says.  Similarly, Berman and his team can support more initiatives. “We can support more users throughout the organization because of Smartsheet,” he says. “What we’re doing directly impacts the client experience, so that is extremely beneficial.”

For more information about this story, please see our case study.