Challenge

The client needed to scale their existing vendor collaboration environment, initially built for automotive engineering project management, to support more complex workflows and financial governance. Multiple projects ran in parallel, each requiring:

• Custom pages to configure resource cost, effort, and time estimates at the management level
• A streamlined onboarding workflow for vendors to upload contracts, NDAs, and compliance documents
• Enforcement of sophisticated business rules to validate data accuracy
• Automated MIS reporting for leadership, project teams, and engineers
• Seamless integration with the client’s existing payroll and finance systems

The manual processes caused inconsistencies, delays, and nearly 40% trade spend leakage due to inaccurate claims, duplicate submissions, and a lack of real-time validation.

Solution

The system was rebuilt on Office 365 Online SharePoint, using it as a secure, scalable foundation. Although SharePoint offers out-of-the-box project management templates, the platform was heavily customized to meet the client’s complex operational, financial, and compliance needs.

Key enhancements included:

• Automated Claim Validation Engine to detect invalid, duplicate, or non-compliant submissions before approval
• Custom vendor onboarding workflow with contract & NDA management
• Rule-based data capture for project metrics, financial data, and claim inputs
• Advanced MIS dashboards tailored for PMO, project leads, vendors, and engineers
• Full integration with payroll & financial systems for accurate payouts and forecasting

These changes enabled the client to streamline project operations while enforcing strict governance on trade promotions, claims, and resource utilization.

Results

The automated workflows and real-time validations delivered measurable improvements across all levels of the organization:

• 40% reduction in trade spend leakage through accurate and automated claim validation
• Full project visibility through multi-level MIS dashboards (PMO, project lead, engineer, vendor)
• Drill-down analytics for performance metrics, financial tracking, and project health
• Faster and compliant vendor onboarding, with automatic documentation audits
• Enhanced productivity for engineering teams through simplified data capture and reporting

Project leads can now monitor their team’s utilization and discrepancies instantly. Individual engineers can view their own performance dashboards, while the PMO gains complete visibility across all projects.