Escaping Excel Hell - Unlocking Business Growth

Excel's a great way of making simple lists. So if you are trying to track sales orders or purchase orders, it's tempting to do it in Excel if you only have an accounting system.

Then the business grows a little. Two people are now trying to share a spreadsheet. That proves impractical so it is split into two halves. Then they are pulled together to report. Then a third person is needed ....

Before you know it there is a spider's web of spreadsheets, with links that sometimes work, and a whole raft of manual processes to control the business. Sound familiar?

That's what I found just before Christmas one year when I walked into a small quoted company's admin room to be greeted as if I were Father Christmas. The team leader had threatened to resign, and the Financial Controller had done their best without making any real progress (lack of time as much as a lack of experience).The Group Finance Director had spoken to a client of mine and had been given my name.

I had previously managed the implementation of an order processing system that had allowed the business to grow 10 fold with minimal increase in staff. This linked sales orders back to back with purchase orders. So when one supplier offered a discount for equipment supplied to certain cusetomers, it was simple to make the claim. £600,000 a year, doubling profits. Now that's a return on investment!

We worked with this second company to define their needs, including resolving disagreements between the senior management that an outsider could do far more effectively. The system implemented not only transformed the admin team, but meant that when the company was taken over, unusually it was this team and this system that was used by the enlarged group. The other team  were made redundant. It could so easily have been the other way around!


There's nothing like happy clients!

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