CMCC Foundation cuts time spent on workflow mapping by 50% with Make Grid

• Industry: Nonprofit & Research Center

• Use case: Operations management

• Country: Italy

• Company size: 201-500 employees

• Apps used: MongoDB, JotForm, Monday.com, SAP S/4HANA

The CMCC Foundation, a leading Italian research center, is dedicated to studying the complex relationship between climate change and society. But behind the scenes, operational inefficiencies were slowing their impact.

Before adopting Make and Make Grid, its visual interactive interface for mapping and managing workflows, CMCC dealt with fragmented data and complex workflow dependencies. Make Grid came in especially handy once the company’s growing automation complexity made managing scenario changes harder.

Giuseppe Amaranto, IT Specialist, and Saul Semeraro, IT Support Specialist at the Foundation, share how Make helped them unify data inputs and navigate system dependencies during organizational shifts.

Before Make, we used some basic automations with Monday.com, but they were quite limited. Make brought flexibility, a user-friendly no-code interface, and outstanding support, significantly expanding what we can do. Now, we can easily analyze our processes, identify improvements, and re-engineer them.

Giuseppe Amaranto, IT Specialist at CMCC Foundation

Image note: Make Grid flagging an issue in CMCC's scenario (red exclamation mark sign)

The challenges

Prior to implementing Make and Make Grid, CMCC Foundation was struggling with two main bottlenecks.

Fragmented data management

Before no-code automation, CMCC Foundation relied heavily on Excel forms, endless email threads, and various internal systems to coordinate tasks across research and operations teams. This patchwork approach meant entering the same data repeatedly into multiple systems, an inefficient and error-prone process that slowed down decision-making and hindered collaboration. Furthermore, without a central system to track progress, important tasks sometimes slipped through the fingers.

Workflow vulnerabilities during internal changes

In late 2024, CMCC Foundation underwent a major internal reorganization, merging existing departments and creating new ones. Because many of their workflows were interconnected across teams, such as People & Culture, e-procurement, and operations, even a small change risked causing issues elsewhere. This made it urgent to find a tool that could clearly map these dependencies and manage them with precision.

The solution

Here’s how CMCC Foundation improved its processes by implementing Make’s advanced automation.

Bridging data gaps across disconnected systems

To eliminate manual entry of the same data across multiple platforms, CMCC Foundation integrated Make with MongoDB, JotForm, SAP S/4HANA, and Monday.com. The company built workflows that automatically capture, update, and route data to the right tools and teams. Each form submission now instantly creates a task in Monday.com, ensuring nothing gets lost and all actions are clearly tracked. This reduces human error and significantly speeds up approvals and task completion across departments.

Before Make, we didn’t have dashboards or accessible data. Everything lived in emails. Now, with the workflows we’ve built, we have clear statistics and insights that help us make better decisions.

Giuseppe Amaranto, IT Specialist at CMCC Foundation

Leveraging Make Grid to manage organizational change

When CMCC Foundation started a big department reorganization, Make Grid became indispensable. It provided a comprehensive view of how their automations are interlinked.

Image note: A visual depiction of dependencies across multiple scenarios in Make Grid

For example, when updates were made to MongoDB databases or Monday.com boards, Make Grid visualized which Make scenarios would be affected, ensuring no workflow was disrupted. This proactive approach eliminated guesswork, helping the IT team maintain system alignment and operational continuity.

We use MongoDB as our master database, so when something changes, Make Grid shows us which workflows are affected and lets us update them right away. The same goes for Monday.com. If we edit or delete a column, Make Grid highlights any impacted workflows. Without it, checking our 250-plus scenarios manually would take days.

 Saul Semeraro, IT Support Specialist, CMCC Foundation

The results

The outcomes CMCC Foundation achieved underscore the unprecedented flexibility and efficiency Make and Make Grid brought to their daily processes. With Make, CMCC Foundation reached:

• 65% reduction in data entry errors for HR processes

• 50% decrease in HR-related email traffic

• 85% faster purchase request entries

• 78% fewer data entry errors in purchasing

• 60% reduction in status-check calls

• 50% less time spent identifying workflow dependencies with Make Grid

Why are CMCC Foundation and Make a perfect match?

For the CMCC Foundation, adopting Make and Make Grid has been transformative. Their journey from scattered Excel sheets to fully integrated, intelligent workflows highlights how Make’s user-friendly interface and proactive support empower teams to innovate fearlessly. As part of this evolution, CMCC is also using Make’s AI to categorize purchase requests, analyze research content, and explore new use cases like CV screening and smart support chatbots. This way, the company wants to build even more intelligent, adaptive automation. To close, Giuseppe Amaranto shares a key insight for anyone thinking about using Make and Make Grid:

Make Grid gave us the visibility and control we needed. Its intuitive, visual interface is amazing because it lets us see every connection and module clearly. With recent updates, we can even jump directly to tools like Google Sheets or Monday boards. It’s clear that with Make, we don’t just keep up. We stay ahead.

Image note: A flat view of CMCC Foundation's HR scenario in Make Grid

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