Taming mushrooming Spreadsheets
My client, a main player in the medical industry, wanted to improve their seemingly endless number of existing spreadsheets and asked me for help. They were noticing that most of their staff was spending too much time on handling Excel spreadsheets and not being productive.
Before – – –
- Industry: Medical
- Engagement: Finance Director
- Main Issue: Time wasting
Problems: Waste of time by repeated tasks, which needed to be automated; Waste of time by time– consuming tasks, which could be automated; Mission critical routines built into Excel without documentation or back–up; Formulas with hardcoded parameters, instead of using cell–references; No automation, no macros
- Main Goal: Get a handle on it
After – – –
- In this case the solution was not a single idea and not a single solution, because each of the participating spreadsheets needed a different solution-similar in style, different in execution. The commonality was that in every case, I re-structured the workbook and introduced a macro wherever it was suitable (probably in 90% of the cases).
- The time-saving alone in the first year was calculated at 2,820 hours. By now the total dollar value is estimated to be between $850,000 and $1m.
- By working through existing spreadsheets and automating them, the team saw the possibilities and have since brought forward new ideas to make their workflow better using Excel