When the Spreadsheet Stops Being Enough
A Canadian insurance claims review firm was managing their entire claims workload in Google Sheets - an NDCON case study
Every week a new tab got created. Claims were added manually. Multiple team members worked inside the same file simultaneously. Deletions happened. Edits overwrote each other. There was no version control, no audit trail, and no way to know who had changed what or when. Status updates were manual and nobody received a notification when something moved forward or fell behind.
For a team of ten people reviewing sensitive insurance claims, the operational and security risks were significant. Team members could see files that were not assigned to them. Managers had no reliable view of what was actually in progress versus what had stalled. The process that was supposed to support the work was quietly undermining it.
The organization needed a solution that was cost effective, secure by design, and capable of automating the manual overhead that was consuming team capacity every week. They were already in a Microsoft environment. The investment was already made. What they needed was someone to build the right solution inside it.
The Approach: Build Inside What Already Exists
NDCON evaluated the requirements against the Microsoft 365 environment the organization was already paying for and determined that a custom SharePoint and Power Automate solution was the right answer.
Not a new platform. Not an additional subscription. A purpose-built solution inside the infrastructure they already owned, designed around how the claims review process actually worked.
The engagement covered three areas of work –
The first was requirements mapping. Before anything was built, the existing process was mapped in full. How claims entered the workflow, how they were assigned, what statuses they moved through, what the manager needed to see versus what individual reviewers needed to see, and where the current process was creating the most friction and risk.
The second was the SharePoint build. A custom claims tracking list was built with defined fields, claim statuses, and assignment logic. Custom views were configured for each role in the organization. Reviewers see only the claims assigned to them. Managers see everything. Security is applied automatically based on assignment, not manually managed by anyone on the team. Document libraries were structured to keep claim-related files organized and accessible to the right people at the right time.
The third was Power Automate configuration. Automated workflows were built to handle the security settings that were previously applied manually, send notifications when a claim status changed, and trigger reminders when deadlines were approaching.
The manual follow-up that previously consumed management time was replaced by a set of automated processes running in the background.
The Result: Capacity Recovered, Errors Eliminated
The before and after is direct –
Before, a new Google Sheet tab every week. No version control. Multiple people editing simultaneously with no safeguards. Deletions with no recovery. Manual status updates with no notifications. Team members with visibility into files that were not assigned to them. Managers spending time chasing status rather than managing outcomes.
After, a single structured environment where every claim has a defined place, a defined owner, and a defined status. Security is automatic. Reviewers see what they are assigned. Managers see everything in one view without asking anyone for an update. Notifications and reminders run without manual intervention.
The team recovered capacity that had been absorbed by the manual overhead of maintaining and navigating the spreadsheet process. The manager was able to redirect time previously spent on status chasing and error correction to actual management work.
The security risk of team members accessing unassigned claim files was eliminated by design rather than managed through policy and hope.
What This Engagement Demonstrates
The right solution is not always a new platform. For this organization, the answer was already inside the Microsoft 365 subscription they were paying for.
The investment was in building the right solution inside what already existed.
SharePoint and Power Automate are consistently underutilized by organizations that have them. The flexibility to build custom lists, configure role-based views, automate security settings, and trigger notifications without additional licensing costs makes it one of the highest return investments available to small and mid-sized teams when it is built properly.
Security by design matters in claims review. The previous process required trust and manual discipline to keep sensitive files from the wrong eyes. The new solution makes that impossible by design. Assignment drives visibility. No policy enforcement required.
Automation recovers management capacity. The notifications and reminders that Power Automate now handles were previously tasks a manager carried mentally or chased manually. Removing that overhead did not just save time. It removed a category of operational risk that was present every week.