smartsheet select

Making Great Work Happen

Who are the Smartsheet Select?

The Smartsheet Select is a group of high performing users who utilize Smartsheet to make better decisions, power transformation and change the world around them. Read the success stories below to learn more about how they work.

Find out how the Smartsheet Select have made a difference to their companies.

Meet the Smartsheet Select

Here are our 2019 winners as voted for by the public.

Sam Gregson-Williams

The Football Association

For Sam at The FA, effective project management is vital – especially when the eyes of the world are upon the organisation. Embedding Smartsheet across the business, Sam helped to bridge organisational siloes and ensured the tool has become a core part of business operations, from managing England’s performance at World Cups, to hosting a record number of events at Wembley stadium. In fact, the entire organisation uses Smartsheet from planning each season\'s projects and activities through to delivering and reporting on those projects. The FA and its stakeholders benefit from greater accountability and visibility, through consolidated dashboards, across the group.

Dan Foster

Paragon Customer Communications

Gaining customer trust and confidence is a major priority for Paragon Customer Communications. That’s why Dan Foster and his colleagues have been using Smartsheet for 15 months to drive an exceptional customer experience. Paragon first implemented Smartsheet during a transitional phrase, where clients needed real-time access to data on a daily basis. Now, Dan and his teammates are able to use dashboards to provide this – and they’ve also implemented non-conformance systems, allowing collaborators to raise issues, and ensuring quick concern resolution. This has significantly improved time management, efficiency and risk management. Most importantly, it has given Paragon’s clients ultimate confidence.

Kate Tinsley

Workforce Software

At WorkForce Software, Smartsheet was originally used by just a few members of staff. Now, Kate Tinsley and her colleagues are exploring new, expanded uses for the software, pushing the boundaries of what Smartsheet can do. It’s used on a global basis and the workforce management business employs every functionality Smartsheet has to offer, including scheduling, reporting, project logs, customer dashboards, customer tracking, and real time global project collaboration, both internally and externally. Smartsheet has saved time, helped reduce leakage, and instilled functional processes. For Kate, it’s not just a matter of project planning – it’s a financial and timesheet management tool as well.

Kate White

Kaplan Financial

The e-learning department at Kaplan Financial started small, with projects and content errors managed via email. As the team grew, the training provider needed a collaborative project management tool – so Kate White brought Smartsheet onboard to this end. Her greatest achievement so far has been to use Smartsheet to improve the department’s error-reporting process, pioneering the use of Smartsheet forms to collect data regarding errors within their e-learning content. Kate and her colleagues have been able to significantly reduce the number of error tickets, to the point where a couple of months ago, there was a period where there were none at all.

Andrea Vecchi

Sonnedix

At Independent Power Producer (IPP), Sonnedix, Andrea Vecchi has helped to ensure Smartsheet is an integral part of the business’ transformation strategy. It’s a fast-growing company with many different locations and teams, so the main challenge was to maintain the same level of communication and cross-functional visibility that the business enjoyed when it was starting out, without additional overheads for reporting and interface management. Andrea implemented Smartsheet across all company functions – from M&A to engineering and construction, finance, ESG, strategy, and operations. This has delivered real business value. Smartsheet has helped Sonnedix stay lean, while enhancing communication and visibility – as well as accountability – as the business grows.

Andrew Sellars

Atalian Servest

Andrew Sellars, at facility management service provider Atalian Servest, uses Smartsheet to record all project activity in real time, with full transparency. For three years, the team has used it to build and track business transformation programmes through to completion. This has driven significantly improved operational efficiencies, and increased output and productivity. Atalian Servest use Smartsheet to embed continuous improvement processes and behaviours into the culture of new and existing businesses. This assists with operations as far-reaching as M&A, organic growth, operational inefficiencies, communication, accountability issues, business awareness of activity and resources, and even failing programmes of work.

Damien Mair

TMC Pharma Services

Global pharmaceutical development organisation TMC Pharma has been using Smartsheet for two years to manage clinical trials. Damien Mair and his colleagues are building what is effectively an ERP system that all employees and contractors will be able to use, enhancing TMC Pharma’s oversight capabilities across all of its trials. Damien and his team have also begun to build trackers and dashboards for the organisation’s entire portfolio, including regulatory activities. Timelines are shared both internally and with clients, to improve customer service. Damien hopes that Smartsheet will help the organisation overcome the challenges of efficient and effective time tracking, expense reporting and invoicing.

Ed Holloway

MS Society

For the UK’s largest MS charity, collaboration is the key to delivering new services for people affected by the condition. Ed Holloway knew the charity needed a tool to help everyone understand plans, report on progress, raise issues, and work together more effectively. So, for the last four years, he’s been using Smartsheet as a core reporting tool, helping to manage risks and create a shared view of activities. Now, everybody has the information they need at their fingertips – and as a senior manager, Ed can see single-point truths about key achievements, while quickly responding to issues that need attention.

Jack Gunn

AB Agri (ABF)

AB Agri is the agricultural division of ABF, an animal feed retailer with employees in 50 countries. When Jack Gunn joined the business, Smartsheet was predominantly used by only a handful of people. As part of a new strategy launch, he has pioneered its use, and it is now employed across a portfolio of strategy initiatives, giving the CEO greater visibility of all programmes and projects. At anytime, and with a single glance, he can look at one page and understand what’s happening. Smartsheet empowers AB Agri to work in a structured manner toward a collective goal and further growth.

Jonathan Moon

Sodexo

Smartsheet was originally employed by Jonathan Moon at Sodexo to improve efficiencies around project management. But once the team had access to the software, the company soon realised its capabilities went above and beyond those ambitions. Jonathan and his colleagues now use Smartsheet to automate intranet form capabilities, reduce email traffic, and allow people to stay on top of different workflows and project tasks. Smartsheet also helps the team achieve learning and development goals, improving the user experience around training requests through the use of forms and automation. It saves the admin team hours each week previously spent receiving, logging and forwarding emails.

Ken Sharp

Stadimax

Successful internal and external collaboration is key to success for stadium and sports consultants, Stadimax. Ken Sharp has championed using Smartsheet to encourage collaboration with various high profile sporting clients, creating a pure, ‘open book’ way of working that delights customers and ensures projects run as expected. Ken and his colleagues, including a team of 20 sales agents, are able to stay up to date with sales leads, as well as individual and team performance. After seven years of use, Stadimax now uses Smartsheet for everything from sales tracking to performance measuring, and even cash flow management.

Matthew Phillips

Horticultural Trades Association

Trade association for the UK garden industry, the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA), has implemented Smartsheet as a solution to several issues it was facing. Previously, there was no system or process in place for requesting changes to the CRM, which led to them slipping through the cracks. Matthew Phillips identified Smartsheet as a potential solution. After 14 months, Matthew and his colleagues now use it for CRM development change requests, external room bookings, BCP, and business inspections, as well as project management. Smartsheet has also powered transformation at the HTA by greatly increasing collaboration between internal departments and external suppliers.

Matthew Round

Longhurst Group

The challenge for Matthew Round at social housing provider, Longhurst Group, was to automate time-intensive processes and improve reporting across a large geographical area and a widespread workforce. The Business Transformation team uses Smartsheet to manage project plans, store daily logs, track risks and lessons learnt, and communicate project development through dashboards. Smartsheet has helped move the company forward via itsa mobile app and workflows, and each project is managed bespokely depending on the style and skills of the project manager and their team. Matthew and his colleagues are now using Smartsheet to build a culture of continuous improvement and mobility around outdated processes.

Nic Cunliffe

Vaillant

Vaillant has a long history of developing world-leading products for heating, cooling and hot water. With 13,000 employees worldwide, Nic Cunliffe and the wider Vaillant team have been using Smartsheet for three years to overcome challenges around customer rebate processes and backlogs. Smartsheet has helped them to create agile solutions, remove the duplication of processes, dismantle islands of excellence, and enable full business power – all while keeping a user-driven focus. With Smartsheet, Nic has broughtused Smartsheet to create a high quality information highway, bringing simplicity and efficiency to complex processessolutions, meaning Vaillant is now able to offer an effortless customer journey. As a result, Vaillant has received industry compliments for being ‘best in class’.

Nick Slater

BuroHappold Engineering

The IT department at BuroHappold Engineering once struggled to manage expectations and deliver work on time. Four years ago, Nick Slater introduced Smartsheet to huge effect. Teams across the business now rely on Smartsheet, and two teams have received approval for additional hires after they were able to demonstrate that they didn’t have the capacity to deliver on critical projects. The first major project using the new methodology is forecast to go live on schedule and 11% under budget. Crucially, by introducing a new project methodology, services revenues increased by more than 110%, a truly impressive outcome for Nick and his colleagues.

Olga Pushkina

Seven Partnership

Working as a specialist project management consultancy for a global FMCG company, creates a unique set of challenges for Seven – particularly around the standardisation of processes and the analysis of masses of real estate data. To tackle this, Olga Pushkina set up a network of project dashboards and workspaces on Smartsheet to manage the FMCG\'s worldwide real estate portfolio. Each member of the real estate team is now able to track and analyse data for more than 250 projects across eight regions, in real-time. As a result, the team is able to collaborate more efficiently on projects and produce more meaningful reports.

Paul McGuinness

Care UK

Consistency of output across multiple locations was a challenge for the UK\'s largest independent provider of health and social care, Care UK. Since Paul McGuinness implemented Smartsheet, he has consolidated the improvement plans of each office location into a single location, allowing for greater unity and accountability. The organisation’s intranet was also mapped in a complete content audit, all stored on the software. As functionality improved, cross-sheet formulas proved to be a game changer. Care UK’s use of the system as a ‘fits all’ solution has since grown so much that project management now only equates to about 5% of overall use.

Søren Udby

Rinicare

Rinicare develops new healthcare technologies through participation in Innovate UK and EU Horizon 2020 funded projects. Project manager Søren Udby drove the implementation of Smartsheet, which proved to be the ideal tool for these kinds of funding initiatives, each of which has many stakeholders. Since introducing Smartsheet, Rinicare has been asked by external organisations to coordinate international research and innovation projects, such as a pan-European project involving maternity care. So, not only has this driven better project management – it’s also created a new source of revenue, opening up new and exciting opportunities for the wider business.

Tim Chalklen

AbiCare

In the seven months since implementing Smartsheet, AbiCare – which delivers at-home and live-in care provision – has already reaped significant benefits, steered by Tim Chalklen. Tim invested in Smartsheet for its project management capabilities, and the company is now using it for a variety of projects, marketing campaigns, resource management, and even onboarding. This has transformed how AbiCare manages and visualises its projects, with a powerful impact on collaboration and enhanced reporting capabilities. With Smartsheet at his side, Tim has been able to take control of projects across the board, while the company has streamlined processes to great effect.

See the Smartsheet Select nomination terms and conditions