ECS, a leader in advanced technology, science, and engineering solutions, receives hundreds of performance ratings reports for its government contracts. To make it easier to manage and analyze these reports, the company developed an AI-driven document processing model using AI Builder in Power Automate.
“The generative AI capabilities in Power Platform transformed how we use existing data – and made us smarter about our customer relationships.”
Maddie Aguero, Proposal Analyst Manager, ECS
When ECS proposal team member Maddie Aguero stumbled upon a Microsoft conference session on AI Builder, she realized this technology could help her company transform disconnected contractor review reporting data into actionable business insights. As a company that relies heavily on government contracts to drive its technology, science, and engineering business, ECS receives performance ratings, which are like “report cards” from the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS). This is mission-critical information because it tells businesses like ECS how they are performing across contracts. But the data contained in CPARS is delivered in difficult-to-read PDFs, requiring significant manual labor to process and record results.
Aguero, who had not heard of AI Builder prior to the conference, quickly saw the opportunity to make CPARS data more accessible by building an AI model to extract key fields within PDFs, which could then feed into insightful Power BI dashboards. Now, ECS managers have a real-time pulse on performance trends, enabling them to meet their high bar for customer satisfaction while also gaining powerful new data points and customer testimonials to win projects. Aguero exemplifies how Microsoft Power Platform can turn one person’s idea into company-wide strategic impact through automation and AI—regardless of that person’s background or department.
Unlocking the power of data for government proposals
As a leader in delivering innovative solutions to government agencies, ECS has troves of data on its project performance via mandated use of the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS). Yet, due to the PDF format of CPARS reports, the proposal team at ECS struggled to derive meaningful insights from these performance reviews.
“We had all this data in a SharePoint library,” says Maddie Aguero, a member of the proposal team. “We just had no analytics to tell us what was in that data. Without those metrics, ECS was flying blind on performance trends that could be impacting our customer relationships.”
But by leveraging Microsoft Power Platform, this single employee was able to unlock analytics that enabled her company to make data-driven decisions around contract performance.
A chance encounter at the Microsoft Power Platform Conference
Manual data processing of CPARS reports proved hugely laborious and required digging through hundreds of CPARS files. “Managers had to stop what they were doing and read through several pages to glean satisfaction levels,” says Doug Bowlds, Vice President of ECS’ Proposal Center. This slow, manual process hampered ECS’ ability to efficiently demonstrate its high performance.
But serendipity struck when Aguero attended a presentation on AI Builder given by Microsoft Group Product Owner Gwenael Bego at last year’s Power Platform Conference. AI Builder is a capability directly integrated within Power Automate and Power Apps that gives anyone the ability to develop AI models using a low-code approach. Among other features, AI Builder can understand and process text, detect and recognize objects in images, forecast business outcomes, and analyze customer sentiment.
Aguero had never heard of AI Builder until this conference (in fact, she admits she had mistakenly entered the wrong room, thinking it would be a session on Power BI!). Although she had no background in software development, this chance encounter led Aguero to recognize AI Builder’s potential to collect insights from CPARS reviews.
The same day, Aguero used AI Builder in Power Automate to automate processing of the company’s CPARS files. To do this, she created a cloud flow in Power Automate and added a document processing model using a simple, step-by-step wizard in AI Builder. Another flow moves the data into SharePoint lists, where it is transformed into consumable, actionable intelligence for interactive Power BI dashboards. She also used Power Automate to trigger email synopses for key stakeholders once a new CPARS report is added to the system.
“Maddie automated all of this using Power Platform, which allows us to monitor customer satisfaction at a glance,” Bowlds says. “Managers can filter dashboard views by customer, contract type, business unit, or evaluation period to reveal performance patterns.”
“As a young woman with a liberal arts background, I used to feel like the power to innovate was behind a padlocked door, obstructed by prerequisites I didn't meet,” says Aguero. “Power Platform unlocked the opportunity for me to be an innovator in my field.”
Powerful outcomes
Aguero’s solution allowed ECS to quickly process more than 800 backlogged CPARS reports that otherwise would have required months of manual effort, ultimately saving the business hundreds of hours. The use of AI-driven cloud flows deliver real-time insights as new assessments come in, prompting C-suite leaders to review the dashboard in their weekly strategic operations meetings.
“The generative AI capabilities in Power Platform transformed how we use existing data and made us smarter about our customer relationships,” says Aguero. For proposal managers such as Bowlds, it enables compelling customer testimonials. “I can showcase our strong customer satisfaction in my proposals,” he says. “That’s very powerful.”
Aguero is already at work to take the solution even further. Using the new Create Text with GPT action in AI Builder, the model will be able to create an AI-generated summary of a CPARS report, indicate whether it was overall positive or negative, and pick out any notable customer quotes for future use in proposals. This fully AI-generated write-up will be included in the email that goes out to managers and logged in SharePoint for future use. “The 'Create Text with GPT action' in AI Builder was another huge breakthrough for us,” says Aguero. “I am impressed at how accurate it is, with no apparent hallucinations or mistakes.”
Data-driven, strategic decisions
Senior company leaders such as Bowlds can use the dashboard to filter views to focus on certain clients or business units and pinpoint strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. “I can look at a single company division and see how their satisfaction scores are rating,” he says.
Similarly, business development teams can analyze historical performance on previous projects when pursuing new work. As Bowlds says, “We can make a better pitch with proof of our great work based on CPARS insights.”
From reporting burden to competitive advantage
For many government contractors, the CPARS review process represents a mandatory data analysis and reporting burden. But for ECS, Aguero’s solution transforms this process from an annual chore into continuous competitive advantage. Bowlds sees automated CPARS analytics strengthening the company: “We can showcase how satisfied customers are with proof directly from CPARS reviews.”
This scalable solution demonstrates how Power Platform’s automation and AI can turn data into assets that sharpen competitiveness. As Aguero says, “It gave us insights we never thought we'd be able to access—and those insights are coming from a proposal department. That proves Power Platform is democratizing the data analytics industry.”
The future looks bright
ECS can now base partnerships on real performance metrics instead of guesswork. Aguero’s work ushered in an era of data-driven decisions to nurture relationships and seize strategic opportunities. According to Bowlds, ECS sees abundant potential to apply Power Platform across the business: “Groups such as Human Resources and Accounting are now asking how Maddie can help them automate their workflows.”
Patrick Elder, Director of Data and AI at ECS, adds: “One of the exciting things about what Maddie created and the Microsoft Power Platform, is that she developed a functioning application without the formal background that would normally be required to do something like this.”
Thanks to Aguero’s vision, ECS transformed disconnected data into a competitive advantage. Her ingenuity taps into Microsoft automation to unlock priceless business insights. “And to think all this happened because I stumbled into the wrong room,” Aguero says. “That’s the power of Power Platform.”
“As a young woman with a liberal arts background, I used to feel like the power to innovate was behind a padlocked door, obstructed by prerequisites I didn't meet. Power Platform unlocked the opportunity for me to be an innovator in my field.”
Maddie Aguero, Proposal Analyst Manager, ECS
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