360° digital agency
Nematis : 5 min instead of 45 to 60 per quote
project created automatically at signing
Business school
Transformation of a Notion workspace for student life at a business school
EDHEC Business School is a leading higher education institution with several campuses in France and abroad, including Lille, Nice, Paris and London.
1 · Context
Student life is a core part of the EDHEC experience: the school has 87 student associations, more than 430 events organized every year and over 2,800 students involved annually.
Across the Lille and Nice campuses, these associations cover a wide range of fields: sports, culture, arts, entrepreneurship, environment, inclusion, health and civic debate. Together they turn student engagement into a hands-on learning environment.
This operational intensity requires continuous coordination between student associations, BDE teams, the Student Life department, Corporate Communications and internal EDHEC stakeholders, with strong requirements around validation, visibility, accountability and yearly handovers. At that scale, designing a custom Notion workspace is less a tooling project than an organizational one.
2 · Challenge
The brief at a glance
- Centralize requests
- Clarify validation steps
- Improve data reliability
- Give each stakeholder the right view at the right time
- Reduce dependency on informal exchanges
At EDHEC’s scale, student life is not simply a sequence of events to approve: it operates as a dense, recurring, multi-stakeholder system. With dozens of associations, several hundred events per year and stakeholders spread across campuses, student teams, Student Life and communications, the core challenge is not to document the existing process more thoroughly, but to turn a fragmented workflow into a reliable coordination infrastructure.
Each event request moves across multiple tools, files and communication channels, weakening visibility into the real status of preparation, approvals and responsibilities. Teams compensate for this fragmentation through manual reporting, repeated follow-ups and cross-updates, which increases administrative workload while reducing the reliability of the information available.
From a business standpoint, the objective is twofold: secure the organization of a high volume of events while freeing operational time so teams can focus on student support, project quality and continuity from one academic year to the next.
3 · Roadmap
- 1
Audit of real workflows
Audited processes, databases and real-life workflows to identify structural complexity, redundant information and operational friction.
- 2
Simplified architecture
Simplified the workspace architecture to make it more operational, more intuitive to navigate and better aligned with day-to-day usage.
- 3
Centralized requests
Centralized event and content requests through Fillout forms directly connected to Notion.
- 4
Automated key steps
Automated key workflow steps through Gmail and Notion notifications to keep stakeholders informed throughout the approval process.
- 5
Dashboards per stakeholder
Built dedicated dashboards for student associations, BDE teams, Student Life, communications teams and internal EDHEC stakeholders.
- 6
Documentation and tutorials
Created documentation and video tutorials to support autonomy, onboarding and recurring handovers between student teams.
- 7
Adoption and refinement
Collected feedback, supported adoption across stakeholder groups and refined the system based on real usage.
4 · The transformation
Before
- The workflow between student associations, BDE teams and EDHEC administration lacks fluidity, creating bottlenecks in event approval.
- Constant operational noise sets in: information is re-entered and scattered across Teams, SharePoint, Google Drive, Google Forms and email, costing teams time and energy.
- Event reporting for student associations requires continuous manual updates across multiple calendars, creating a significant administrative burden.
- Communications teams have limited real-time visibility into upcoming events, forcing them to manually follow up with campus or association leads.
After
- EDHEC moved from fragmented workflows spread across multiple tools and reporting files to a centralized platform where requests, events and approvals are tracked in one place.
- The event approval process became significantly faster, turning a manual reporting flow into a smooth validation workflow that can be completed in just a few clicks.
- Requests are submitted through Fillout, a form tool natively connected to Notion.
- At every key step, stakeholders automatically receive an email notification.
- Student Life teams reduced repetitive reporting tasks by 90% and improved coordination with BDE teams and student associations: follow-ups are now generated live and automatically based on the actual progress of event preparation.
I had the pleasure of working with Warren on developing our Notion pages to make my organization far easier to run, and I could not be more satisfied with the experience. Warren was highly responsive and our exchanges were seamless. His professionalism and expertise brought this project to completion with remarkable efficiency. I highly recommend Warren for any similar project, and I will not hesitate to call on his services again!
Nicolas FlaszenskiStudent Life and Diversity Officer, EDHEC Business SchoolLet’s talk about your project.
Tell me a little about what you’re working on. I’ll get back to you personally to discuss the next steps.
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