We worked alongside East West Rail to successfully implement Microsoft Technology that streamlined two vital processes: Business Case Spend Approvals and Audit Action Tracking.
When Covid-19 caused a shift to remote working in March 2020, East West Rail (EWR) were still highly reliant on direct in-person communication and office-based working practices for many critical organisational processes. Having just embarked on a new rail project to connect Oxford and Cambridge, EWR faced an immediate and acute challenge to maintain its high-quality operations.
In just three months, we:
- Successfully implemented Microsoft technology for EWR that streamlined two vital processes: Business Case Spend Approvals and Audit Action Tracking.
- Designed, developed, and deployed two custom Microsoft Power App applications across the EWR organisation, removing the need for face-to-face approvals and providing a sustainable long-term solution for remote working.
- Improved line-of-sight to data sitting behind business cases and audit actions, increasing control over the assignment of £billions of government spend and enabling the smooth running of action burndown against make-or-break audit requirements.
For us, the next phase of work for EWR includes:
- Further optimisation and improvements of the spend approvals and audit tracker Power Apps, with the aim of releasing a new version with new features
- Creating a new pipeline of Power Apps across the business to optimise other business needs, including change management and governance processes
It was a pleasure to work with the team from Techmodal on digitising legacy processes at pace.
I found Techmodal to be modern, innovative, flexible and customer orientated.
The challenge
In the face of Covid-19, EWR proactively looked for an innovative solution that would digitise its spend approvals and company auditing processes. EWR was determined to maintain high-quality service levels while working remotely and needed to be sure that they could easily access and analyse key data and optimise the assignment of costs against agreed budgets.
EWR recognised that an effective solution would need to automate labour intensive tasks and collate the data into a centralised database. By digitising its processes, EWR’s tasks could be completed more effectively and efficiently, remove unnecessary administrative effort and enable employees to spend time on activities that really matter.
Any solution that we created would need to be fun to use, trusted, reliable, easy to maintain and aligned to EWR’s audit and compliance guidelines. With the requirements in-hand, we started work on a viable solution.
1We successfully applied our proven delivery approach and, despite Covid-19 restrictions, continued to maintain an excellent level of client contact.
2We worked with EWR on a short discovery phase to develop an agreed definition of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
3We leveraged the Microsoft O365 suite of tools already purchased by EWR to deliver custom line-of-business applications at record pace.
4We delivered the first proof of concept for spend approvals in just two weeks. Working with the client, we extended this to include audit tracking.
the solution
Over 14 weeks, we leveraged the Microsoft Power Platform to design, develop, test, and deploy two custom applications and a set of dashboards across EWR’s organisation. The first proof of concept for spend approvals took just two weeks to deliver. Working with the client, we extended this good practice to include audit tracking.
Both processes were transformed into highly effective reporting tools through bespoke Power Apps and corresponding Power BI dashboards, providing a centralised database for EWR to access, track and report on project progress including:
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