About our customer
Our customer is a global leader in the steel industry. Headquartered in India, operates with a keen focus on providing high-quality coated steel, steel building solutions, and related products for the construction, infrastructure, industrial, and commercial segments.
The company is renowned for its commitment to sustainability, innovation, and excellence. It offers a wide range of products, including coated steel, roll-formed products, and pre-engineered buildings, catering to the diverse needs of its customers. Our customer is dedicated to environmental stewardship, ensuring that its operations are energy-efficient and minimize impact on the environment. This commitment extends to its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, through which the company engages in community development, environmental conservation, and enhancing educational and health facilities.
Our customer’s vision is to be the preferred choice in steel solutions across Asia, driven by its core values of safety, trust, human dignity, and excellence. The company’s innovative approach, coupled with its commitment to quality and sustainability, positions it as a leader in the steel industry, contributing to the development of the regions it operates in while maintaining a focus on creating a positive impact on society and the environment.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) stands as a testament to a company’s commitment to its societal and environmental obligations. For our customer, a company renowned for its dedication to sustainable development, the journey of CSR transcends mere compliance; it is a core component of its corporate ethos.
The Initial Hurdles
At the heart of our customer’s CSR endeavors were objectives rooted in community development, environmental conservation, and stakeholder engagement. Yet, despite clear goals and a dedicated team, the company faced significant operational hurdles:
Inefficient Budget Tracking: Managing the financial aspects of numerous projects, from allocated budgets to actual expenditures, proved cumbersome. The lack of a centralized, real-time tracking system led to delays and inefficiencies, hindering the strategic allocation of resources.
Volunteer Management Issues: Our customer’s CSR projects thrived on volunteer participation. However, coordinating volunteer efforts, from registration to tracking hours, was an operational nightmare. The absence of a streamlined process for managing volunteer data diminished the company’s ability to fully engage its workforce in CSR activities.
Inadequate Reporting Mechanisms: Documenting the outcomes and impacts of CSR projects is pivotal. Our customer struggled with a reporting system that was not only time-consuming but also failed to capture the depth and breadth of project impacts effectively.
Recognizing the Need for Innovation
These challenges underscored a critical gap in our customer’s CSR management — the need for a robust, technology-driven solution capable of streamlining operations and magnifying impact. The company’s leadership realized that overcoming these hurdles required more than just incremental improvements; it necessitated a transformative approach to CSR management.
Revolutionizing our customer’s Approach to CSR with Embee Low Code App Development
Embee, known for its innovative solutions in the technology sphere, brought to the table a unique understanding of our customer’s CSR vision and its inherent challenges. The solution was not just an application, but a strategic tool designed to align with the company’s CSR objectives, offering real-time management, enhanced engagement, and comprehensive reporting functionalities.
The CSR application developed by Embee was not a one-size-fits-all app, but a customized solution meticulously designed to meet the specific needs of our customer.
Key Functionalities of the CSR application
Real-Time Budget Tracking and Management
- Overview: Allows for the management and tracking of budgets allocated to various CSR projects in real time.
- Features:
- Dashboard displaying financial year-wise, focus area-wise budget allocations versus actual spending.
- Alerts for budget overruns or underutilization, enabling proactive financial management.
- Overview: Facilitates the entire lifecycle management of CSR projects, from initiation to closure.
- Features:
- Creation of new projects with detailed information, including title, category, NGO partner details, focus areas, and timelines.
- Approval workflow that routes projects through various approvers, including CSR admins and different levels of CSR-SLT, based on project budgets and other criteria.
- Ability to save projects as drafts, edit, and update project details, fostering flexibility in project planning and execution.
- Overview: Streamlines volunteer participation in CSR projects, enhancing engagement and tracking.
- Features:
- Registration portal for employees and their family members to sign up as volunteers for specific projects.
- A Nomination system allowing volunteers to either nominate themselves or their family members, enhancing participation.
- Logging of volunteer hours and activities, offering valuable data for assessing participation and impact.
- Overview: Provides comprehensive reporting tools for ongoing and completed projects, enabling detailed impact assessment and documentation.
- Features:
- Creation of Work in Progress (WIP) reports with the ability to add progress notes, attachments, and financial details.
- Final report generation that captures project outcomes, volunteer contributions, and actual expenditures against the budget.
- Automated email notifications to keep stakeholders informed about project statuses and approvals.
Tools and Technologies Used-
- Microsoft PowerApps
- Power Automate
- Power BI
- SharePoint Online
The Implementation Journey
The deployment of Embee’s CSR application within the company was a phased process, marked by strategic planning, rigorous testing, and continuous feedback loops. Training sessions were conducted to familiarize staff with the new system, ensuring a smooth transition from traditional methods to a comprehensive, tech-driven CSR management approach.
Application in Action: The Implementation Process
The true test of any solution lies in its implementation and the tangible benefits it delivers. For our customer, the integration of Embee’s CSR application marked a pivotal shift in how CSR projects were managed, tracked, and reported.
Streamlining CSR Management
From the outset, the application proved instrumental in streamlining operations. Project managers could now initiate, monitor, and report on projects through a single interface, eliminating the need for cumbersome paperwork and spreadsheets.
Enhancing Volunteer Engagement
The volunteer management module transformed the way our customer engaged with its workforce. Employees could easily sign up for projects, log their hours, and share their experiences, fostering a sense of community and purpose.
Elevating Reporting and Impact Analysis
With Embee’s solution, reporting became not just easier but more impactful. The application’s advanced analytics offered deep insights into each project’s reach and effectiveness, enabling our customer to measure its CSR impact accurately.
The transformative impacts of the solution on budget management, volunteer engagement, and project reporting underscore the application’s role in enhancing CSR operations.
In conclusion, the CSR application developed by Embee for the customer is a comprehensive tool that empowers organizations to manage their CSR initiatives more effectively. By leveraging technology, the application addresses traditional challenges in CSR management, driving significant improvements in project execution, financial tracking, volunteer engagement, and impact reporting, ultimately leading to more impactful and sustainable CSR outcomes.
