The Client
A transport business using monday.com Work Management to manage three different services:
- Vehicle transfers
- Vehicle relocations
- Bike hires
On the surface, everything seemed to be working.
Behind the scenes… not so much.
The Challenge
Every customer enquiry was recorded as a single item containing every possible service the customer requested.
If a customer needed three transfers, a relocation and a bike hire, everything was crammed into one item.
The team would then duplicate that item multiple times so each job had its own record.
It worked, but it created three big problems.
- Lots of repetitive manual work.
- Duplicate information spread across multiple items.
- Confusion about which item was the “real” one, leading to things being missed or updated in the wrong place.
The system had slowly evolved into something that everyone knew how to use, but nobody really enjoyed using.
The Goal
Reduce manual administration, eliminate duplicate records and make it easier for staff to manage multiple services from a single customer enquiry.
The Solution
Instead of storing everything in one board, the system was redesigned around the work itself.
Separate boards were created for:
- Enquiries
- Vehicle Transfers
- Vehicle Relocations
- Bike Hire
Customers still experienced what looked like a single enquiry form.
Using Fillout Forms with conditional logic, they were guided through whichever services they selected. If they requested multiple transfers, they could add them one after another before moving on to another service if required.
Behind the scenes, every submission was automatically created on the correct board. The enquiry was created in the enquiries board and was automatically connected to any related transfers, vehicle relocations or bike hires.
Automations linked the records together so staff could easily navigate between the original enquiry and the individual jobs.
Each board was lot simpler, cleaner and more focused – the bike hire board only contained columns relevant to bike hires, ditto for transfers and vehicle relocations.
The data was cleaner.
Reporting became far more accurate.
Manual duplication disappeared.
The Unexpected Roadblock
Technically, the new system was a huge improvement.
But the team wasn’t convinced.
They had spent years working with one giant item that contained everything.
Now the information lived across multiple connected boards.
Nothing had actually become harder, they could see all their stuff in the one board but the new system felt unfamiliar.
Even though monday.com was automatically linking everything together, the team didn’t yet trust the concept of connected boards.
The Adjustment
Rather than forcing the new workflow, we deliberately turned off all the match automations responsible for connecting matching items.
Instead of automatically linking records together, staff manually searched for and connected each enquiry to its related jobs.
From a technical perspective, this looked like a step backwards.
It added a few extra clicks.
But every manual connection reinforced how the data related to each other.
Within a short time, connected boards stopped feeling like magic.
They simply made sense.
Once the team understood the relationships, the automation could easily have been switched back on. (So far it hasn’t been).
The Outcome
The final system achieved exactly what it was designed to do.
- Significantly reduced manual administration.
- Eliminated confusing duplicate records.
- Gave the managers excellent reporting and visibility into exactly what was happening when and where.
- Saved the team time.
- Most importantly, the team embraced the new system instead of resisting it.
The biggest improvement wasn’t actually technical.
It was adoption.
Key Takeaway
It’s easy to measure efficiency.
It’s much harder to measure confidence.
As consultants, we naturally want to automate everything we can.
But if automation hides concepts that users haven’t yet understood, it can actually slow adoption.
Sometimes a few minutes of manual work isn’t inefficiency.
It’s training.
And once people understand why the system works, they’re far more likely to trust it, use it properly and embrace the automations that follow.
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