Student recruitment, admissions and enrolment visibility
Applicant data is often spread across marketing, admissions and faculty teams, making it harder to track pipelines, monitor conversion and forecast intake accurately.
Research funding, grant delivery and compliance
Funding bids, approvals, reporting and spend are often managed through manual, time-intensive processes, increasing admin burden and raising compliance risk
Portfolio oversight across faculties and services
Decentralised delivery across faculties and services makes it difficult to prioritise work, manage dependencies and maintain a clear view of progress and risk.How Smartsheet helps higher education
Smartsheet provides a flexible, secure platform that enables universities to track recruitment pipelines, manage research funding and gain consolidated portfolio visibility across faculties and services.
With real-time dashboards, structured workflows and standardised reporting, institutions can improve forecasting, strengthen governance and reduce administrative burden while remaining easy to adopt and scale across the organisation
- Centralised real-time visibility across teams and portfolios.
- Standard templates and workflows.
- Standardised governance and reporting.
- Secure, scalable collaboration with one source of truth.
- Automated alerts and controls.
- Clear ownership and audit trails.
- Rapid adoption without heavy training overheads.
Key higher education use cases
Project Portfolio Management (PPM) – gain a real-time view of projects, risks and progress across teams and departments, with consistent reporting and clear oversight for senior stakeholders.
Project Management Office (PMO) – standardise ways of working, templates and reporting across projects, improving governance, assurance and consistency of delivery.
Marketing & communications – centralise marketing, event, and fundraising operations, enhance cross-functional collaboration and provide real-time visibility to improve efficiency and demonstrate impact.
IT PMO – support delivery of digital transformation initiatives, including system modernisation, cloud migration and service redesign. Apply consistent governance, track delivery progress and improve visibility across digital programmes.
Property management & maintenance – manage campus maintenance with a single, flexible platform, streamline work orders, prioritise requests, assign tasks and track progress all in one place.
Student services – track student requests such as admissions, financial aid and course registration from submission to close to ensure a quicker resolution and higher satisfaction.
Curriculum development – streamline curriculum reviews at scale with clear visibility, built-in collaboration, and automated reminders to keep academic programmes on track.
Research & grant management – manage grant applications, funded research programmes, milestones and reporting in one place. Improve transparency, compliance and collaboration across internal teams and external partners.
Portfolio dashboard
- Full overview of all projects
- Identify projects that require intervention
- Spot risks and issues sooner, and get back on track
- Automate reporting, saving time
- Full visibility of all activity by region, type, season, and more
Project dashboard
- Track progress across the project
- Project teams are aligned
- Measure progress against budget
- Identify and mitigate risks and issues
- Measure Return on Investment
These examples are for demonstration purposes. When creating solutions, we always build to your specific requirements and ways of working to optimise adoption.
Higher education sector customers using Smartsheet
Why choose Cheetah Transformation as your Smartsheet partner?
Higher Education Expertise
We understand the unique challenges facing universities, from managing cross-functional change and limited resources to improving visibility across academic and operational initiatives. We support higher education institutions in delivering projects with stronger governance, collaboration and control.
Tailored Support Focused on Value
Our implementation and advisory services are designed to help institutions realise value quickly. From reducing manual reporting and disconnected processes to improving oversight and adoption, we help ensure Smartsheet supports efficient and sustainable delivery.
Flexible Route to Purchase
We work with higher education institutions to provide a practical route to purchasing Smartsheet licences and services, aligned to procurement requirements and internal approval processes. This gives universities flexibility while ensuring the right solution and support model is in place.
Smartsheet Specialists
Our team includes certified Smartsheet experts and former Smartsheet employees with deep platform knowledge. We help universities improve project delivery, strengthen reporting and build scalable solutions that support both immediate priorities and longer-term transformation.A smarter alternative as Microsoft Project Online approaches end of life
With Microsoft Project Online approaching end of life, many public sector organisations are reassessing how they manage projects and PMO delivery.
Teams that previously relied on Project Online – often because it was bundled with an existing Microsoft package – are now reviewing more purpose-built platforms, such as Smartsheet.
Smartsheet provides a modern, flexible alternative that:
- Supports full PMO and portfolio governance.
- Allows easier adoption across departments.
- Reduces reporting overheads.
- Scales beyond traditional project tracking.
- Delivers faster time to value.
Cheetah Transformation helps organisations transition smoothly from legacy tools to Smartsheet with structured migration and adoption support.
Choosing the right partner matters just as much as choosing the right platform
Cheetah Transformation offers:
- Smartsheet Platinum Partner status
- G-Cloud compliant services
- Cyber Essentials Plus certified
- Higher education sector delivery experience
- Framework-friendly engagement models
Smartsheet – supporting higher education
The University of Adelaide is one of Australia’s leading research universities and the country’s third-oldest university, with significant responsibilities around compliance and governance. It needed a better way to collect compliance data from across the institution, manage due diligence efficiently and document decisions under stringent national security requirements.
Using Smartsheet, the university built a centralised compliance review system with automated workflows, real-time visibility and secure, role-based access to information.
Discover how the University of Adelaide reduced manual effort, improved collaboration and created a single source of truth for compliance monitoring, helping teams save time and make faster, better-informed decisions.
View the case studyWe lacked a dependable, centralised system for escalating decisions or communicating outcomes back down the chain
We now don’t need to spend time digging through months of emails to find a particular discussion from a meeting or chase meeting participants for status updates. Those micro-frustrations used to add up and slow everyone down. Now, everything’s in one place, saving us time. I’ve loved working with Cheetah, they’re fantastic at actively listening, interpreting our vision—even when we’re not using technical language—and translating that into a functional solution.
The team was first class all the way
I worked with Gary Thornton and Rob Eberstein from Cheetah on a complex SmartSheet Implementation. I was the Exec Sponsor for the implementation, and could not be happier with the results. The team was first class all the way, and SmartSheet is now a foundational application in my organization for managing both internal and external projects. Gary and Rob always made themselves available, gave expert insights and always delivered. They are also just really great people. I highly recommend them!
5 star services, from start to finish
As a specialist fit out business, it is extremely hard to find a solution that is compatible with our processes & vision. What Cheetah have delivered, has surpass our expectations and I’m excited to see the improvements this will make to our business, and for our delivery partners and clients. Cheetah team have supported us, all the way and been a great bunch of people to work with. We look forward to phase 2, later this year where we introduce other departments & our quality management system integrated into our PMS. See you on Phase 2!
They went above and beyond at every step
Working with Cheetah Transformation has been an outstanding experience that truly elevated our project management capabilities. Gary and Youssef were exceptional throughout—highly knowledgeable, consistently responsive, and a pleasure to partner with. Their solution not only met our needs but transformed the way we manage projects, bringing significantly greater efficiency and transparency to our workflows. They went above and beyond at every step, and we couldn’t be more pleased with the results. Highly recommended.
A great partner for any team looking to improve execution and clarity through smart digital solutions
I highly recommend Youssef for his outstanding support during the Smartsheet implementation. His deep understanding of both the tool and the needs of our teams led to the development of a robust solution that brought much-needed transparency to our project management processes. Youssef went beyond expectations—not only ensuring the system was technically solid, but also continuously improving it by adding meaningful information while simplifying the inputs required from users. His ability to balance structure with usability made a real difference in user adoption and overall project visibility. A great partner for any team looking to improve execution and clarity through smart digital solutions.
Outstanding service and expertise – driving productivity and collaboration at scale
We’ve been working closely with Cheetah Transformation, and I cannot overstate the value that they bring to our team. Their depth of knowledge in Smartsheet, combined with their responsiveness, problem-solving mindset, and consistently friendly demeanor, has made a huge difference to our operations. Smartsheet, when implemented effectively, is a game-changer. It automates repetitive project tasks, provides intuitive and visually engaging dashboards, and creates a single source of truth that enhances visibility across functions. With Cheetah Transformation’s expert support, we were able to harness these capabilities — saving time, increasing productivity, and improving collaboration across multiple teams and time zones.
Moving from a siloed way of working to a centralised approach has been really helpful.
We now have a solid foundation to identify inefficiencies, spot gaps in responsibility, and flag issues early without having to dig through email chains from months ago
We have eliminated manual and repetitive tasks and improved real-time collaboration and productivity.
As a result, we’re seeing significant returns on investment.
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