Paving the Path to Homeownership for the Underserved with Digital Solutions.

Client's Industry:

Nonprofit

Organization Size:

National Office ~ 1000

Smartsheet Platforms:

Modern Project & Portfolio Management

Overview

A nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering sustainable homeownership opportunities for Cleveland residents who live in tax-forfeited properties partnered with Curated Automation to build a cohesive tracking program for its program constituents. The technology solutions aimed to streamline collaboration among partner organizations and enhance transparency throughout every stage of the homeownership process.

The Challenge

To enhance transparency and optimize operations, the nonprofit sought a user-centric, integrated solution with Smartsheet at the core. This platform would effectively consolidate data from various stakeholders, including field workers, constituents, administrators, and partner organizations. The primary objectives were to simplify decision-making processes, facilitate seamless handoffs between collaborating entities, and provide comprehensive visibility into the entire workflow. By implementing this unified system, the organization aimed to simplify complex procedures and improve overall efficiency in their mission to support sustainable homeownership.

The core deliverables of this project were to:

Design a secure, consolidated, Smartsheet enabled solution that tracks program participants’ status and progress

Integrate data across stakeholder systems and build easy to digest reports that give visibility into each step in the process

Enable the program administration team to react quickly to support program and constituent success.

The Approach

The Curated Automation team conducted a comprehensive review of all process documentation and facilitated a design session with the operations team to evaluate workflows and understand how partner organizations interacted within the program. Through collaborative sessions, the team identified key goals and desired outcomes, uncovering opportunities to simplify and automate processes with Smartsheet.

With Smartsheet as the technology foundation, the team initially focused on designing an efficient backend database structure to unify data across sources and enable reporting. To enhance reporting capabilities, Power BI and ArcGIS were integrated into the solution, enabling the creation of secure, visually intuitive reports tailored for donors, partners, and board members. This approach provided each stakeholder the appropriate access. The integration of Smartsheet and Power BI provided a consolidated view of program data, offering clarity on opportunities, successes, and workflow friction points.

During the Smartsheet deployment, the Curated Automation team adopted a holistic, user-focused approach by delivering training, end-to-end process flows, and consistent application experiences to minimize resistance to change. To ensure successful adoption across the organization, the team emphasized change management through:

Live tool training sessions

Embedded online training resources

Process flow maps

Dashboards designed with consistency across all processes

This comprehensive strategy empowered stakeholders to seamlessly adopt new tools while improving collaboration and operational efficiency.

The Outcomes

This modernization project is in its initial phase and to date has delivered:

Connected and secure data with automated workflows across the partner network

User-centered design for each stakeholder, including the constituent who prefers paper intake forms

Decreased frustration through simplifying work – especially for program administrator

Real time, dynamic data dashboards with geospatial reports activated by ArcGIS and PowerBI

Adoption tools tailored to field workers, partners, and administrators

After a brief pilot period, this program will be expanding to additional metropolitan areas.