THE CHALLENGE
The firm ran its projects out of Excel. Every commitment, schedule item, risk, and regulatory note lived in workbooks somebody had to update by hand, and keeping a client current meant emailing yet another copy of a spreadsheet. Internally, nobody was ever quite sure which file was the real one. What they did not want was a heavyweight project-management platform full of backlogs and ticket hierarchies they would never open. They wanted the exact way they already work, made reliable and easy to share.
WHAT WE DID
We built one dashboard shaped around the logs the team actually keeps: commitments, hot topics, schedule, risks and opportunities, regulatory items, team contacts. The key numbers sit at the top – open commitments, next meeting, active risks, overdue tasks – and the detail lives in structured cards below, all edited in one place instead of across files. The part that changed the client relationship was the sharing. A secure link opens a clean, read-only view with no login and nothing to edit, and because it reads live data, the client always sees the current agreed status rather than a copy someone forgot to resend. When a fixed record is needed, a point-in-time snapshot exports as a one-page A3 PDF.
WHAT THEY GOT
One source of truth in place of a folder of spreadsheets. The team updates a project once, in one place, and the client sees the result the moment they open the link: no attachment, no version number, no doubt about which file is current. The tool does only what the firm needs and nothing it does not, so it was quick to learn and it fits the way the practice already runs.
The value
The firm stopped spending its meetings reconciling versions and its evenings emailing spreadsheets. Preparing for a status call is now opening one dashboard, and bringing a client up to date is sending one link. Because the system mirrors how the team already works instead of imposing a generic process, adoption was not a fight, and a new hire or a client stakeholder can read the whole project at a glance.
- Six project logs consolidated into one editable dashboard, replacing the Excel workbooks.
- A live, read-only client link that needs no login and never goes stale.
- One-page A3 PDF snapshots for a fixed, point-in-time record when it is needed.
“Sharing a project used to mean emailing a spreadsheet and hoping they opened the right one. Now I send a link, and whatever they open is the truth. It does exactly what we do, and nothing we do not.”
– Principal, architecture practice