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Case study · Professional and business services
Marketing agency: Smartsheet adoption from under 40% to 85%
PPS Consulting India rescued a stalled Smartsheet rollout at an award-winning US marketing agency. Two years after the tool was bought, fewer than 40% of the team used it. After we redesigned the workflows and dashboards and ran adoption as a plan of its own, 85% did, email dropped to near zero, and leadership could see client operations as they happened.
At a glance
85% adoption
up from under 40%, two years after the agency bought the tool
- Client
- An award-winning US marketing agency
- Sector
- Professional and business services
- Where
- United States
- The work
- Adoption
- Tools
- Smartsheet, Slack
- Led by
- Rahul Kulkarni
What was the problem?
The agency had bought Smartsheet two years earlier, but fewer than 40% of the team used it. Long-serving staff and outside contractors in particular had gone back to Slack messages and email, and task boards were half updated.
The dashboards weren't easy to read or act on, and leadership couldn't follow client onboarding and delivery through the system, or hold anyone to account through it.
What did we do?
-
Diagnose
We sat with people in each role to see where the workflows broke and why they avoided the tool, and looked at usage patterns, how the dashboards were used, and the gaps between Smartsheet and Slack.
-
Design
Client onboarding and management workflows streamlined in Smartsheet, dashboards by role that show each person's tasks, timelines and dependencies, and automations that cut manual steps and flag missed ones.
-
Adopt
An adoption plan of its own: live and recorded training by role, click-through manuals and job aids, one-to-one onboarding for new contractors, recognition for early adopters, and team leads and respected long-serving staff as champions of the change.
-
Hand over
Team conversations moved to Slack channels linked to Smartsheet, management reviews ran from the dashboards, and leaders learned to spot a drop in usage and reinforce the habits.
What did we build?
Before: under 40% adoption
- Work agreed in Slack messages and email
- Task boards half updated
- Dashboards hard to read or act on
- Leadership unable to track client work
After: 85% adoption
- Work in Smartsheet, conversation in linked Slack channels
- Dashboards by role
- Management reviews run from the dashboards
- Usage watched, drop-offs reinforced
The adoption plan
- Live and recorded training, by role
- Click-through manuals and job aids
- One-to-one onboarding for contractors
- Recognition for early adopters
- Team leads and long-serving staff as champions
What leadership reviews
- Client onboarding, stage by stage
- Tasks, timelines and dependencies by role
- Missed steps, flagged automatically
- Usage, so a drop is caught early
What changed?
- Adoption from under 40% to 85%, with contractors and the core team both using it.
- Email for coordinating work down to near zero: the work in Smartsheet, the conversation in linked Slack channels.
- Leadership seeing client operations as they happen, and better team meetings as a result.
- Client management scaled on one way of working, and a five-star client review.
What stayed after we left?
Smartsheet is the single source of truth, management reviews run from its dashboards, and leaders know how to spot and reverse a drop in usage.
Is this relevant to you?
It is if:
- You bought ClickUp, Monday.com, Smartsheet or similar, and most of the work still happens in chat and email.
- Your long-serving people are the ones who never switched.
- You are about to buy another tool to fix the first one.
Where would we start with you?
With the PPS Backbone Review: four weeks, a fixed fee of ₹1,50,000 to ₹3,50,000 plus GST and expenses, one fix working by the end, and a plan with owners and measures that is yours to keep, whether or not we build it with you.
How the Review worksWhat else have we done like this?
9 workstreams, one cadence
nine project managers reporting in one format, with a one-page status for the CFO every week
Global finance transformation: nine workstreams on one plan
Relevant if you are running several initiatives at once and each one reports differently.
Runs without the founder
SOPs for the recurring work, one workspace, and a weekly rhythm the operations lead now runs
Marketing operations team: running without the founder
Relevant if every client question in your business still reaches the founder.
- 100+ engagements
- 62,000+ delivery hours
- Top 1% Expert-Vetted on Upwork
- 100% job success, independently verified
Across Upwork and direct contracts, including the people on our project teams.
- MIT MicroMasters, Supply Chain
- Six Sigma Black Belt
- PRINCE2 Practitioner
Questions about this case
Why do tool rollouts stall?
Usually for reasons the tool can't fix: the workflows in it don't match how people actually work, and the dashboards don't answer anyone's question. Here the workflows and dashboards were rebuilt, and adoption was run as a change plan with training, champions and follow-through.
Do you need to replace a tool that nobody uses?
Rarely. This agency kept Smartsheet. What changed was the workflow inside it, the dashboards on top of it and the plan for getting people to use it.
Tell us two things.
What you're trying to achieve in the next 90 days, and what's breaking in execution. We'll tell you plainly what we'd fix first.
Book a discovery callFree, no obligation, and under an NDA if you prefer.
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