Enterprise Workflow
Automation
How we replaced 12 manual approval processes with intelligent Power Automate workflows — recapturing 1,200 employee-hours per year and cutting approval latency from 3.5 days to 4.8 hours.
Client Context
A regional healthcare network with 14 facilities processed everything on paper — purchase requisitions, vendor onboarding, employee change requests, incident reports, equipment maintenance tickets, and compliance certifications. A single purchase order required 5 handwritten signatures across 3 departments, traveling via interoffice mail.
The average approval cycle was 3.5 business days. Rush requests took "only" 2 days — because an admin physically walked the form between buildings. During busy periods, forms were lost in transit at a rate of 8%, triggering duplicate submissions and reconciliation nightmares.
The organization had Microsoft 365 E3 licenses but was using only email and Word. Power Automate, SharePoint, and Teams were available at no additional cost but completely untouched.
Drowning in Paper
The client's operations team spent more time managing paperwork than managing operations. Compliance audits were particularly painful — finding a specific approval chain from 6 months ago meant rifling through filing cabinets across multiple buildings.
📋 Paper-Based Approvals
12 distinct approval workflows required physical signatures. Purchase orders, vendor onboarding, IT change requests, and compliance certifications all traveled via interoffice mail at glacial speed.
⏱️ 3.5-Day Cycle Time
Average approval took 3.5 business days. Critical purchase requests for patient-facing equipment were delayed alongside routine office supply orders — no prioritization mechanism existed.
📉 8% Loss Rate
Forms were routinely lost in transit between buildings. 8% of submissions required re-creation, adding frustration and duplicating effort. No audit trail existed for any approval decision.
🔍 Compliance Risk
Healthcare regulatory audits required proof of timely approvals. Finding historical records meant searching physical filing cabinets. Three audit findings in the previous year cited inadequate documentation.
Intelligent Workflow Platform
We built a unified approval platform on the Microsoft 365 stack the client already owned, digitizing all 12 workflows with intelligent routing, mobile approvals, and complete audit trails.
01 — Power App Intake Forms
Built responsive Power Apps forms for each workflow type. Dynamic fields adapt based on request category — a $500 supply order shows a simple form, while a $50K equipment request surfaces additional justification fields and auto-routes to VP-level approval.
02 — Intelligent Routing
Power Automate flows route approvals based on amount thresholds, department, and urgency level. Azure AD group membership determines the approval chain. Escalation triggers automatically if an approver hasn't responded within 4 hours.
03 — Teams Adaptive Cards
Approvers receive rich Adaptive Cards in Microsoft Teams with all request details, attachments, and one-tap approve/reject buttons. Approvals can be completed from mobile devices in under 15 seconds.
04 — Compliance Dashboard
Every approval action is timestamped and logged to SharePoint with the approver's identity, decision, and any comments. Power BI embedded dashboards provide real-time visibility into SLA compliance and bottleneck identification.
Power Automate Flow Architecture
The core routing engine uses a metadata-driven approach. A SharePoint configuration list defines approval chains, thresholds, and escalation rules — so the operations team can modify routing without touching the flow itself.
The metadata-driven approach means adding a new approval category takes 5 minutes — add a row to the configuration list. No flow modifications, no IT involvement, no deployment. The operations team manages their own workflow rules.
Measurable Impact
The platform was rolled out in 3 phases over 8 weeks. All 12 workflows were live within 2 months, and the final paper process was retired on day 60.
| Metric | Before | After | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Approval Cycle Time | 3.5 days | 4.8 hours | ▲ 94% faster |
| Manual Processes | 12 paper workflows | 0 (fully digital) | ▲ 100% digitized |
| Form Loss Rate | 8% lost in transit | 0% | ▲ 100% reliability |
| Employee Hours Saved | 1,200+ hrs/year | Reallocated to patient care | ▲ $240K value |
| Audit Findings | 3 findings/year | 0 findings | ▲ 100% compliant |
| Additional License Cost | — | $0 (existing M365) | ▲ Zero cost |
We were paying for Microsoft 365 for years and using it as expensive email. Garnet Grid showed us that the automation tools we needed were already included in our license. Our nurses used to spend 45 minutes a day chasing paper approvals — now they approve equipment requests from their phones in 15 seconds and spend that time with patients.
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