Being the eye of the storm In August of 2017, Hurricane Harvey slammed into the coastlines of Texas and Louisiana, starting one of the worst hurricane seasons on record. Followed quickly by Category 5 Hurricanes Irma and Maria, the season devastated the Caribbean and Southeastern US, claiming over 3,000 lives and doing almost $300 billion in damage. For Starbucks, the hurricanes created a problem that a昀昀ected both its people and its business: with landlines and internet connections down, district managers had no way to assess the impact on either store employees or the stores themselves. They scrambled to connect with all the employees they could 昀椀nd, lacking access to contact information databases or other resources. Thousands of miles from Harvey’s fury, at Starbucks headquarters in Seattle, the focus was on the people. For a company that prioritizes its employees, having no insight into the health and wellbeing of thousands of partners during a crisis was unacceptable. A leader in Public A昀昀airs put together a focused, 昀椀ve-person IT team, which set out to solve the problem using our platform. | 28 SMARTSHEET IN ACTION