How a global ports and terminals operator orchestrates every communications workflow in one place
With fragmented calendars, email-based request ambushes, and manual reporting consuming team hours, the operator consolidated 11 connected workflows into a single Airtable platform. Briefing intake, creative asset reviews, agency utilization, budget reporting, and AI-generated leadership recaps all run from one source of truth.
The problem
The communications and marketing function operated across siloed tools: fragmented regional calendars, email-based request queues with unclear ownership, manual spreadsheet formulas prone to breaking, and no consolidated view of agency utilization or budget burn. Creative asset reviews relied on rotation-based assignment that left gaps in coverage. Leadership had no real-time visibility into campaign status or spend.
Duplicate data entry compounded the workload: purchase order details had to be re-keyed from documents into the ERP system, and reporting required assembling figures from multiple spreadsheets. The team lacked a single intake point for briefings, which arrived by email with unpredictable urgency and no routing logic.
What they built
The operator built a consolidated communications operations platform in Airtable covering 11 end-to-end workflows. An AI-powered briefing intake form routes incoming requests automatically, replacing email-based ambushes with a structured, prioritized queue. A unified content calendar overlays public events and company milestones across regions, giving every team a shared view of publishing schedules.
Creative asset reviews run through auto-numbered job IDs, versioning, and feedback round tracking. Agency timesheets feed directly into retainer burndown and utilization reports. AI fields extract purchase order data from uploaded documents, eliminating re-keying into Oracle. The platform also generates automated weekly leadership recaps, pulling live data from the same bases used for daily operations.
The outcome
All communications, marketing, creative, and finance workflows now run from a single Airtable platform, eliminating the need for Monday.com, SharePoint lists, and disconnected Excel trackers. Leadership has real-time spend versus budget visibility, agency utilization is measurable, and the weekly executive digest generates automatically from live operational data.
The intake-to-execution path is fully structured: briefings arrive through a form, get AI-routed by urgency and type, and flow into campaign task assignments and creative production queues. PO data extraction means zero re-keying into the ERP, and monthly retainer burndown reports are produced directly from timesheet records without manual aggregation.
Inside the solution
Corporate Communications Operations Hub
Marketing & Campaign Operations
Marketing & Communications
- Briefing form intake with AI routing
- Unified content calendar with public and company day overlays
- Recurring deliverable templates
- Campaign execution with agency task assignment
- Creative asset review, auto-numbered job IDs, and versioning
- Social media publishing automation
- AI-generated weekly leadership recaps
- PO intake with AI data extraction from uploaded documents
- Agency timesheet and utilization tracking
- Proof point repository tracking
- Monthly retainer burndown reporting
- Fragmented calendars across regions
- Manual task creation and unclear urgency
- Disjointed asset review processes and rotation-based assignment gaps
- Duplicate data entry into the ERP system
- Unclear agency utilization and overspending risks
- Lack of visibility across global and regional teams
- Manual reporting and complex spreadsheet formulas breaking
- Email-based ambushes for requests
- Duplicate content creation
- Single source of truth across regions
- Faster asset approval cycles and intake-to-delivery
- Real-time spend versus budget analysis and proactive budget control
- Controlled agency spend and accurate retainer burn tracking
- Standardization via recurring templates
- Faster intake-to-execution with AI routing
- Reduced manual reporting
- Clearer ownership and automated procurement handoffs
- Corporate Communications
- Media Relations
- Social and Digital
- Internal Relations
- Marketing
- Creative Services
- External Agencies
- Microsoft Teams
- SharePoint
- Outlook
- Hootsuite
- Internal communications platform
- Media monitoring platform
- OneDrive
- Oracle
Corporate Communications Operations Hub
Run every communications request end to end from one base: structured briefing intake, a unified content calendar that overlays public events and company milestones, auto-numbered creative jobs with version and feedback-round tracking, agency timesheets, proof points and purchase orders. Six automations and six native AI fields handle intake routing, review digests, purchase order extraction and the weekly leadership recap, so spend versus budget and agency retainer burn stay visible without manual reporting.
How a unified communications platform comes together in Airtable
Connect intake to routing with AI-powered briefing forms
Unify the content calendar across regions and channels
Run creative production through auto-numbered job IDs and versioning
Track agency timesheets against retainer budgets in real time
Automate leadership reporting from live operational data
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
An Airtable intake form captures the request details, and AI fields evaluate the campaign type, urgency signals, and deliverable scope. The routing logic assigns the briefing to the appropriate team queue and flags priority level, replacing the informal email chain that previously directed requests.
Yes. The unified calendar in this deployment overlays public event schedules and company milestone dates alongside the publishing calendar, so regional and global teams see a consolidated view and can coordinate around conflicting dates before content is produced.
When a purchase order document is uploaded into Airtable, AI fields extract the relevant data fields automatically and populate the corresponding records. This eliminates the manual re-keying step that previously required staff to transfer figures into the ERP system.
The automated weekly digest pulls live campaign status, budget utilization, and key activity data directly from the operational Airtable bases. It is generated on a schedule without manual aggregation, providing leadership with a consistent, up-to-date summary without requiring team members to compile a separate report.
Agency team members log hours in Airtable records tied to their retainer agreements. Automated views calculate cumulative hours against the monthly retainer allocation and surface the remaining budget, giving account managers a live burndown view rather than a monthly surprise at invoice time.