All I want to do is...

This was the opening phrase that I heard this morning as I sat in front of the Head of Finance. He's fairly new to his job, knowing us from his previous employment, and called us in as we'd helped him a few years ago. 

I'm sure that his scenario is common to many companies. They use a software package, which for their industry is ideal, as it captures information (financials, stock inventory and manufacturing etc) well and can provide them with reasonable reports.

However, his company is part of a group, whose parent company is from the Far East that have particular reporting requirements. For their managements they need certain KPIs which are quite complex in how they're put together and standard financial statements (P&L, balance sheet and cashflow) that are anything but standard.

So, I had in my hands a "management pack". It really was a pack and I thought that any boardmeeting that went through this would take a while!

The first question I asked is, "do you really need to produce all these figures?", as it's quite common for packs to grow in size as more details are wanted, but rarely reduced for those that become obsolete in the decision making process.

His look gave me the reassurance that he'd asked the same question to his boss and got nowhere.

So, the reason I was there. He spends too long and gets bogged down preparing The Pack, which leaves him little time to do what he really needs to do and adding value to the business.

As in many situations, when the main software doesn't produce what you want... who do you call?

Excel.

He shows me a collection of spreadsheets that are used to create The Pack, each with lots of worksheets and complicated table layouts..."I take that figure there...and that one there...and those feed (as he alt tabs between workbooks) into that one...". After a little while it all becomes a blur, as I'm sure it was to him as he had to pick his way through this collection.

I remember my days as an accountant, when I wouldn't think twice about using Excel. We might have had the shiney new SAP R/3, but it couldn't produce the reports that I had to produce with nice layouts, charts and traffic lights. Yes, the head office of the company I worked for liked to use traffic lights to show areas that are doing well and those that are a concern. In fairness they worked well and got the message across at a glance, but SAP R/3 couldn't do traffic lights quite as well as Excel. Well, maybe it could, but unless you wanted to wait a couple of years for the IT department to finally get round to producing the report, Excel was the solution master. 

As for those ad-hoc reports, it really does rule!

In many ways because of the restraints that he has in terms of output and inputs, it actually makes his solution easier to identify. Afterall, part of his problem was that the original spreadsheet wasn't designed to do what it's ultimately doing many years later with bits tagged on and shoe-horned in and in fact the main software that they used back then was probably something else. So, to look holistically (sorry, still haven't got last week's exam keywords out of my head!) at what was required and what was available made finding the solution relatively simple.

So, I talk to him about simplifying the spreadsheet arrangement by taking out any 'number noise', getting rid of 'magic numbers' and putting in place a proper workflow and structure to the spreadsheets making them nice and clean - with the intention that he 'just drops in the TB', adds a few figures from elsewhere into a well defined place and out pops The Pack. In theory.

In some ways I'd like to us to develop a specific [non-Excel] software solution so that it just does the one job and does it well, as I know that in 5 years time someone's going to be sat at that desk with an Excel expert opposite cursing a collection of spreadsheets that have 'evolved' (for want of a better word) into something completely different that's become inefficient and a risk to fail.

But, he needs flexibility and when you need flexibility... who do you call?