WHIM Innovation Transforms Michigan Central’s Marketing and Communications Workflow
Designing Clarity in the Launch Chaos
Primary Goals
Establish a Centralized Intake and Workflow System
Replace disorganized request channels (emails, hallway chats) with a structured, centralized hub for managing marketing and communications work.
Automate Task Routing and Prioritization to Boost Productivity
Eliminate admin chaos and bottlenecks by introducing a self-service knowledge base to ensure faster turnaround and better workload distribution.
Increase Operational Efficiency and Team Capacity
Free up the team from administrative chaos, enabling them to focus on higher-value strategic initiatives that drive meaningful and measurable results.
Overview:
Michigan Central—a home for innovation in the heart of Detroit—was brimming with creativity. But behind the scenes? Marketing and Communications requests were coming in hot (and disorganized). From graphic design to media campaigns and press releases, the team was stretched thin, with no centralized system to manage it all.
Without a structured intake process, critical details got lost in email threads and hallway chats. Things slipped through the cracks. Priorities blurred. Execution stalled. That’s when they called WHIM Innovation.
Because chaos is cute for toddlers. Not for marketing teams.
The Challenge: Disorganized Request Management
The Marketing and Communications team at Michigan Central needed to build their own internal structure to survive the swirl of requests. But emails and informal conversations weren’t cutting it.
No system meant:
- No visibility
- No accountability
- No way to prioritize work effectively
Missed deadlines, fragmented communication, and overwhelmed staff were just the symptoms. The root issue? Process chaos.
The Process: A Marketing Hub That Works Smarter
Cue the WHIM Innovation team. We embedded with Michigan Central’s team, got to the heart of the problem, and did what we do best: brought clarity, capacity, and scale through intelligent automation.
We rolled out a custom solution powered by Freshservice—a product in the Freshworks suite—tailored to marketing intake. We mapped out their most frequent request types and built a centralized Marketing Hub that made submitting and managing requests easy, structured, and foolproof.
Key features included:
- Role-specific intake forms for requests like graphic design, asset retrieval, and press outreach
- Smart fields to ensure nothing gets missed up front
- An intuitive interface that guided employees through the process
No more guessing. No more digging through emails. Just smooth workflows and faster turnarounds.
The Solution: Automation and Organization. Flow meets Function.
Once the foundation was laid, we amped things up. With our AI-driven automation services, we configured Freshservice to:
- Auto-create tickets based on request types
- Auto-assign tasks to the right person, based on workload and workflow logic
- Track progress in real-time with transparency baked in
And because smart teams don’t just solve today’s problems—we future-proofed the whole system.
We built a custom self-service knowledge base packed with how-tos, FAQs, and process guides. That meant fewer repeated questions for the marketing team—and empowered requesters who could now get what they needed without slowing down the flow.
THE RESULTS: Operational Clarity with Real ROI
The Marketing Hub gave Michigan Central’s team a scalable, repeatable process that aligned everyone around what mattered: doing great work without the administrative chaos.
The wins:
- No more missing info (or missing requests)
- Requests prioritized and routed automatically
- Centralized collaboration and communication
- Happier team. Higher-quality output. More capacity to focus on strategic initiatives
This wasn’t just a new tool. It was a mindset shift—from firefighting to flow state.
Why It Worked: Strategy + Tech = Real Transformation
At WHIM Innovation, we don’t just toss software at problems. We bring the strategy, design, and execution to build systems that scale. That includes partnerships like Freshworks and Monday.com, where we help organizations tailor platforms to fit their teams—not the other way around.
For Michigan Central, the magic was in human-first automation: building tools that make life easier for real people, doing real work, at real scale. Through smart automation and a deep understanding of how real teams operate, we transformed a bottleneck into a blueprint for flow.
Because when the process flows, the impact grows.
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