Case Study
A Work Management Solution for Managing Complex Scheduling TasksChallenge
The scheduling office for a Cabinet Secretary of a large Federal agency was using Microsoft Word and Outlook to manage incoming invitations and the Secretary’s daily calendar of events. Schedulers were required to manually organize, review, and vet incoming invitations—and manage up to six versions of the Secretary’s calendar.
The office was having significant difficulty managing and responding to the volume of invitations and meeting requests it received.
Solution
After reviewing several possible solutions, SSI implemented a work management solution that incorporated the best features of Outlook with a customized document management and scheduling tool. The new solution managed the entire event invitation and travel request
process from capture through final calendar production.
Benefit
The solution provided new capabilities: an intuitive user interface with simple drag-and-drop calendar features, allowing fluid schedule management; integration with Outlook, facilitating the distribution of electronic calendars and internal meeting invitations; synchronization capabilities, including BlackBerry and other mobile devices; custom reports (listing relevant events), printable for meetings and for the Secretary’s briefing book.
Result
The SSI solution enabled schedulers to manage the Secretary’s private, public, daily, and long-term calendars with ease. Since rolling out the solution at this agency, SSI teams have worked with several other agencies to design and implement similar solutions—which are now transforming the management of invitations and scheduling tasks in their respective offices.