There’s a line I hear a lot from consultancies and agencies:
“There’s so much manual work needed just to keep everyone up to date and projects moving.”
And it’s usually said with a sigh, because everyone knows it’s true.
The thing is, that manual work isn’t “real work”
- Chasing updates
- Writing “quick” status emails
- Getting notes into trackers
- Copying information between tools
- Looking for the latest version of a document
- Holding meetings just to confirm what’s already been discussed
In professional services, that’s not just frustrating, it’s also expensive. Because every hour spent maintaining the machine is an hour not spent on:
- Billable and chargeable work
- Client communication
- Quality and review
- Business development
What this can look like in the real world
- Updates living in email threads
- Document versions drifting across desktops
- Approvals and sign-offs chased manually
- Key dates tracked in someone’s personal system
- “Where are we at?” meetings replacing real progress
- Stakeholders asking for updates that already exist — just not in one place
- Constant feedback loops across email/Teams/Docs
- Tasks spread between tools and spreadsheets
- Client approvals and amends causing rework because nothing is joined up
Projects move forward because someone is pushing them and not because the system supports the work. And most likely, you probably already own the fix. Most of the firms I speak to already pay for Microsoft 365.
Which means you likely already have the building blocks to reduce the manual churn, including:
- Teams for a single workspace per client/project
- Planner for structured task ownership and visibility
- SharePoint for controlled documents, versioning and a “single source of truth”
- Power Automate for reminders and doing the menial tasks (setup filing structure)
The issue is that the tools are often not set up to match how professional services work — so teams default back to manual coordination. When Microsoft 365 is configured around your delivery flow:
- Updates happen in the place the work happens
- Tasks and approvals get tracked automatically
- Everyone can see progress without a meeting
- New joiners can get up to speed quickly
- You reduce risk from “lost” updates and version confusion
- And you protect billable/chargeable time from admin creep
You’re not adding more process.
You’re removing the invisible process you’re already doing just manually.
A simple diagnostic question
If your work would stall without someone constantly:
- chasing updates
- forwarding emails
- re-posting information
- reminding people what’s due
…then it’s not a performance problem. It’s a workflow design problem.
That’s the gap we help close at Greenwood Online: making better use of the Microsoft 365 tools you already have so delivery runs smoother.
If this resonates, book your free efficiency call here: https://greenwood-online.com/contact/
