Case Study: Professional Services firm

Professional Services Firm – Travel Request Application

Create a centralized repository to manage employee travel requests and approvals. 

Challenge

How can we make the travel request process easier to manage?

Employees had no centralized location to request travel for project work and so requests were coming in from across the organization in different formats, causing a lack of visibility and accountability. 

Pain Points

The team had to send a specific form to their manager for approval and there were multiple versions of the form floating around. 

Admins had no way to track which travel requests were approved and which weren’t without asking the manager involved. 

Our Solution

Seamless integration with Power BI and Power Automate

Utilizing PowerApps, a custom Travel Portal was built to manage the end to end process of requesting travel. With PowerApps as the front end UI and Power Automate powering the approval workflows behind the scenes, the solution provided complete visibility into each request. 

Users come into the front page of the PowerApp and are immediately presented with a list of their travel requests with a status filter available. From that page they see summary statistics of their requests and are provided with the ability to submit a new request. 

Managers can approve or reject the request and provide commentary all within the application. The comment history gets logged so if a request gets rejected, users can understand why and respond to the manager as needed. 

Managers have the ability to enter the report and view their KPIs in easily digestable graphs and visualizations. They can view their teams performance, and track it against their performance in previous years. In addition, they can view client billing health and information as well as get a glimpse into what factors effect their project profitability. 

Results

Centralized Repository

Everyone at the company has a single location to go to and view travel and expense related data.

Streamlined Process

A single form stored in a central location that detects the logged in user and auto sends the form to their manager for approval.

Increased Visibility

Users receive notifications when their requests are rejected or approved along with the reason why.