Excel Tips - 5 of the best

Not Just Numbers has been going almost 5 years now and I thought it might be a good time to link to some of the most popular posts on the site. These are posts that are consistently in the top five to ten every month, although some of them were written years ago.

By far the most popular post of all time on the blog is my post on the use of the dollar sign to fix rows and columns in Excel:

EXCEL TIP: The dollar sign ($) in a formula - Fixing cell references

Another much read post is my explanation of the IF statement which is one of the most useful functions to grasp in Excel:

EXCEL TIP: The IF Statement made simple

A more recent post that is proving popular is my assorted tips on tidying up text:

EXCEL TIP: Simple tips for tidying up text in Excel

When you are dealing with imperfect data, it is often handy to be able to deal with errors that make your reports look messy, this post deals with an approach to never needing to see an error message on your reports again:

EXCEL TIP: Eliminating #DIV/0! and other errors automatically using ISERROR

Finally, this post gives a simple tip for learning any new function that you want:

EXCEL TIP: Use any Excel function in seconds

I hope there's something new to learn there for you.



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Online Excel Training - Exclusive Reader Offer

Regular readers will know that I have been working on ways to help you with more in-depth Excel Training than blog posts will allow.

You can already purchase my Introduction to Pivot Tables course and I do have plans for further training videos in the future, however your feedback in response to the survey I did back in March suggested an alternative route might be a better way to ensure that all of your needs are satisfied.

It became quite clear from the survey that:

• Your needs are diverse, and everyone has different gaps in their knowledge;
• A combination of video and written content was desirable;
• To try to cover all of your requirements would be too much to do on my own.

Fortunately, I have since spent some time talking to an excellent organisation that already has these areas covered and it struck me that I wouldn't really be providing you the best service to try to re-invent the wheel.

Excel With Business offer a 32 module Excel Training programme that covers everything you might want to know about Excel (and then some). What's more, and this is the really neat trick, they provide a diagnostic test to determine your proficiency, so that you can focus on the areas that need attention - making the service ideal for beginners and experts alike.

If that doesn't already tick all of your boxes, I have negotiated a deal with Excel With Business to offer you the tests and a full year's access to all of the modules for 50% off the usual price. For full details, click here.

It is only fair that I make it clear that I will receive a commission on these sales, however I would be recommending this course to you if I didn't - and the extra cash helps me to continue providing the blog content free of charge!

I believe that this course can really transform your use of Excel and I would strongly urge you to take a look at what is available.

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Excel Training - I need a minute of your time

Hopefully you are finding my Excel tips useful and they are helping you with your daily work. This week, however, I need a little something from you.

You may have seen that I do offer a small amount of chargeable training delivered from the blog - for example my Introduction to Pivot Tables video training course. This is typically training that goes deeper than  I could in a blog post (and we all have to make a living!).

I am looking to offer further items such as this, but I need a little information from you to help me to understand what you want. So if you could please spare me just one minute of your time to answer the simple questions below, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in anticipation...



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What are your Excel New Year's Resolutions?

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish all of my readers around the world, a very Happy New Year.

To those of you in Australia and New Zealand, whose New Year's Day will already be coming to an end, to those in North America, some of whom will still be out celebrating New Year's Eve, to those of us in the UK just waking up with hangovers, and to my readers in every other country of the world, I hope this brand new year brings you everything you hope for.

But coming back to Excel, what are your Excel-related plans for the new year?

What changes do you plan to make in how you use Excel, to get more out of it in 2013? I'd love to hear about them in the comments.

If you're not sure, I have a few suggestions to get you started. These have all served me well and would certainly improve your Excel spreadsheets, if you're not already doing them. So, here goes...

• I will master pivot tables;
• I will apply the OAP system to every spreadsheet I build;
• I will learn how to import data using ODBC.

For my part, I have resolved to do the following in 2013:

• Have a proper dig around in Excel 2013 to highlight the best bits to you;
• Likewise for PowerPivot, one of the 2010 features I still haven't spent enough time on;
• Develop a series of video training courses for those of you who want to learn in more depth than a blog post allows.

Thanks for all of your contributions in 2012 and I look forward to working with many more of you in 2013.

Don't forget to leave your resolutions in the comments!

Happy New Year.

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Christmas is coming...

Everyone is subscribing to make sure they don't miss
out on their exclusive Secret Santa Gift

Are you all ready for Christmas? If you’re one of those people who have had all of your presents in for weeks, I don’t want to know – it only makes me feel inadequate!

One present I have got ready though is my exclusive Secret Santa gift for my subscribers, which will be emailed out on Christmas day.

If you haven’t already subscribed, do it now in the box on the right of the blog - so Santa doesn't miss you out!

Today's post is a little different, I just wanted to pick up on some of the feedback I received from my post a couple of weeks ago, asking what you wanted to learn from the blog.

Thanks again for the response, it's great to know that so many people are appreciating my posts and to find out what you want to see in the future. After all, a blog is worth nothing without its readers!

Last week I picked up on Bob's request to learn how to prepare a simple cashbook - I hope that did the job for you Bob!

Some other requests, which I think will make their way into future blog posts are:

• A few of you wanted to know more about pulling data into Excel from accounting systems, such as Sage. I have posted on this before, but didn't really cover the detail
• There were a number of requests for more on charts (including sparklines) and pivot tables
• Another popular request was a simple cashflow forecasting spreadsheet

There were also a few things requested that I think I have covered in earlier posts, although they may benefit from a revisit:

• Rolling Graphs
• Dropdown Lists

I also received a couple of requests for more on VBA, however this is an area I intentionally avoid on the blog, as the readership is primarily made up of Excel users rather than programmers. VBA is a massive area in itself, which has much more to do with programming than with Excel. In my experience, most Excel challenges can be handled without VBA, as long as a little creativity is applied.

There are many blogs out there that do a very good job on VBA, for those who do want to read more on it.

I also received a few meatier requests that go beyond a single blog post, and these might be more appropriately addressed in future video training packages, for example:

• Automating the management accounts process
• More depth on my OAP approach

Thanks again for all the feedback, keep it coming! 

Well, if you're are one of those that still haven't subscribed, that’s it for 2012. Unless you go to the top of the blog and subscribe now.

If you have subscribed, you’ll be hearing from me on Christmas Day, with your exclusive Secret Santa Gift.

Either way, have a fantastic Christmas break and I look forward to continuing our journey together in 2013.

Back to the Christmas Shopping!

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Excel - What would you like to learn?

How would you like a future blog post to provide help on a subject of your choosing?

I am working on planning subjects for blog posts for the new year and would really appreciate hearing what you would like to learn about (as long as it is Excel-related!).

Just fill in your request in the form below (along with  a couple of other bits of information that will help me to put it into context), and I will use the responses to guide me when planning my future posts.

For those of you who would rather see an Excel Tip in this post - I haven't forgotten you. There is a quick Excel Tip  for you - when you complete the form.




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Merry Christmas - Take some time to stop and think!

Just a quick blog post to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year.

And, before you go, here is a Christmas-themed video from BMW that also, I think, illustrates quite nicely what happens if you fly around at break-neck speed without stopping to think about whether you might be able to do things in a better way:

I hope you all have a great break and get the chance to stop and think. See you in 2012.


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Spreadsheet help and assistance

I know many of you read this blog for Excel tips and will usually build your spreadsheets yourself, but I realised recently that you might not be fully aware of the other ways I can help with your spreadsheet requirements.

I have therefore added an additional page to the blog, see the new tab above - Need some help with your spreadsheet?

Whether you are after ongoing email advice when you're stuck or someone to build your spreadsheet for you, I can help.

If you have more involved requirements, such as automating your complete management accounts pack from your accounting system, I can come and work on site with you to achieve this.

Just drop me an email (glen@feechan.co.uk) if there is anything you need help with.


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Need a Spreadsheet?

Many readers have used my Spreadsheets by Email service when they have wanted a spreadsheet built to their requirements, so I thought I had better ensure that readers were aware of some significant changes to the presentation of the service (no changes to the quality of the work, or who carries it out).

As the service is very useful both to those who know Excel well and need a little help (I suspect this is the case for most readers of this blog), and people who have never opened a spreadsheet in their lives - I was concerned that the website might have intimidated some of this second group if it came across too "geeky".

So, I've gone for a complete change of name and presentation, which I think will appear more accessible to all. And now you know where I've disappeared to for the last few weeks.

Welcome to needaspreadsheet.com.

Please take a look and let me know what you think, and if you have a spreadsheet you need building, please fill in the form on the site.


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A New Era for Not Just Numbers

Sunrise over Seaham

Hello again to regular readers who might be wondering where I've been. No blog post for over two months! Well, I've been busy reviewing how all the various parts of my business fit together - including this blog.

Not Just Numbers was originally intended to generate traffic for my other businesses, however it is difficult to justify the effort required purely on this basis - hence the deliberations over the last couple of months.

I have been wrestling with this because I enjoy doing the blog and would hate to give it up, and there are many intangible benefits which are difficult to measure for both the business (additional credibility for clients brought in through other routes for example) and for me personally (communicating with many interesting readers that I would not have otherwise met).

Well, the deliberation is over and I have decided not only to continue, but step up the blog activity, while looking for additional ways in which the blog can contribute financially (I still have a business to run!). The most immediate change you will see is the donation button in the right hand column, but I will also be looking for additional advertising where appropriate.

So, onwards and upwards.

PS: Not Just Numbers posts are like buses, none for two months then you get two in one day - there will be another post later today about using the dollar sign in Excel formula to fix cell references.


If you enjoyed this post, go to the top left corner of the blog, where you can subscribe for regular updates and your free report. If you wish to help me to provide future posts like this, please consider donating using the button in the right hand column.

Just for fun - How I created my Excel Christmas Quiz

Before Christmas you may have seen my Excel Christmas Quiz which you can still download here (although the questions might no longer be appropriate for the season, the prize is still valuable until the end of January).

I thought it might be useful in this post to tell you how it was made.

This post will make more sense if you download the spreadsheet first.

The Quiz

The quiz element is pretty straight forward. There are 3 hidden columns alongside the spaces for the answers. One column contains the correct answers (column T), another column (column S) contains a nested IF statement as follows:

(for the first question - row 5)  =IF(R5="","",IF(R5=T5,"Ho Ho Ho","Grinch!"))

which returns a blank cell if no answer is entered, returns "Ho Ho Ho" if the answer entered is equal to the correct answer and "Grinch" if not. Cheesy I know, but it was Christmas.

The third column (column H) contains another IF statement:

(again for the same row) =IF(R5=T5,1,0)

which returns a 1 if the answer is correct or a zero if not.

This third column is summed for the score as follows:

=SUM($H$5:$H$14)&"/10"

This takes the sum of these 1s and 0s and adds the text "/10" after it. See my post on manipulating text in Excel for more detail on this.

The revealing of the Christmas picture


This was done using the background facility in Excel and a series of IF statements combined with offset formulae and conditional formatting.

I first set the background image to be the Christmas picture using Format -> Sheet -> Background. As this tiles the picture in the background and gives no facility to re-size I needed to use some trial and error to get the size I wanted and had to have the image in the top-left to ensure it stayed in the right place.

I then needed to choose a background colour for the rest of the sheet so that the picture was not repeated across the whole sheet - for this I simply formatted the cells with that fill colour (in my case green). It is easier to apply this for the whole sheet and then remove the colour from the cells that hide the picture.

I then created on a separate sheet (hidden) a grid of the same number of cells as the picture, containing random whole numbers between 0 and 9 in each of the cells, representing the 10 questions. This will be used to determine which cells are revealed for each question. I actually used the random number generator to create this grid using the following formula:

=ROUNDDOWN(RAND()*10,0)


RAND() returns a random number between 0 and 1, multiplying this by 10 therefore returns a random number between 0 and 10 (but not necessarily a whole number). The ROUNDDOWN formula rounds down to the number of decimal places specified in the second argument (in this case 0). The result of the whole formula, therefore, is a random whole number between 0 and 9.

Because the RAND formula recalculates on each calculation the spreadsheet does, I needed to fix these numbers as I wanted the cells revealed by a question to stay revealed, not be re-scattered across different cells every time an answer is entered. The simplest way to do this was to copy the grid of numbers and re-paste it over the top of itself using 'paste as values'.

Going back to the main sheet I entered the following formula in the top-left cell of the picture (A1):

=IF(SUM($H$5:$H$14)=10,"",IF(OFFSET($H$5,Sheet4!A1,0)=1,"",1))


The objective of this formula is to return an empty cell if the corresponding question is correct and a 1 if not. I'll explain shortly what we do with this result.


The first IF statement returns an empty cell if the sum of the scores is 10, so all cells are empty if all answers are right. If the total score does not equal 10, the second IF statement checks whether the score of the relevant question is correct (i.e. 1 in column H) and an empty cell if not. The offset function is used to determine which question to look at. $H$5 is the first score (with dollars to fix this reference) but the row number is offset by the number in the corresponding cell in our number grid (on Sheet4). The zero is the number of columns to offset. For example, if the number in the grid is zero, the offset formula will look at cell H5, i.e. the score of question 1, if it is 9 it will look at cell H14 (5+9) and return the score for question 10.

This formula is copied to all cells on the picture, leaving the dollars off the Sheet4 reference so that in cell A2, it looks at cell A2 on Sheet4, etc.

We now have empty cells corresponding to correct questions, which is right as we want an empty cell with no fill as the picture is revealed. For incorrect, or not yet completed, answers we have a 1 in the cell. We use conditional formatting to use this result to hide these cells.

First of all, set the font colour of these cells to the background colour of the rest of the sheet (green in this case). We now have a green "1" in front of the picture for incorrect answers.

We use conditional formatting to choose a green background for these cells if they contain the number 1.

In Excel 2003, select Format -> Conditional Formatting, in Excel 2007/2010 you need to add a new rule. In either case select < Cell value is > < equal to > < 1 > for the three boxes and click the format button to choose the green fill.

Now the picture has a green background until correct answers are entered to gradually reveal the picture.

Revealing the prize


The final step is a much simpler version of revealing the picture, that is only dependent on the total score.

The background of the prize box is set to yellow using the normal cell format and the font colour to whatever you want it to be when it is revealed.

We then use conditional formatting again but enter the following for all of the cells in the prize area:

< Formula is > < =$R$16<>"10/10" >

setting the format to a yellow font colour. This switches the font colour to yellow if the score in cell R16 does not equal 10/10, making the text invisible on the yellow background.

Protecting it all

Finally, we need to protect the sheet so that none of this information can be seen or edited.

Cells are formatted as "Locked" by default, so we need to select the cells that the user needs to be able to use (just the 10 answer boxes), select Format->Cells and on the Protection tab, un-tick the "Locked" box.

We then protect the sheet as follows:

Select Tools->Protection->Protect Sheet

Enter a password so that users cannot switch off the protection and un-tick all boxes in the list except the one that says "Select unlocked cells". Once you have clicked OK, the user cannot even click in any of the cells apart from the 10 answer boxes.

There you have it! Your very own Excel Quiz.


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Ever feel your business needs re-formatting?

You know when your PC starts running slower and things aren't working the way they should. You know it's become a bit bloated with too many things installed on it. Sometimes the best thing to do is reformat and start again with what you know you need. Everything then runs faster and smoother.

I've been through a similar process with my businesses in the last few weeks.

Since launching the Excel Advice by Email service in the middle of May, we have revamped all three corporate websites with the help of Kelly Cairns:

Feechan Consulting Group
Spreadsheets by Email
FC Procurement

In addition, I have brought in a good friend of mine, Les Pynn, to drive forward the FC Procurement business.

All of this activity is the reason that there has not been a blog post for a few weeks. The process is now, however, pretty much complete with everything shiny and new so that I can concentrate on my day job, including this blog.

Are there any areas of your business that could do with re-formatting and starting again?


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Please judge my blog jiggery pokery

I have made a number of changes to the layout of the blog and would appreciate any comments. I have tried to make it look cleaner as well as allowing additional information to be shown in a new side-bar down the right as well as the left.

Please comment below with any feedback.

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The importance of personality in communications - A lesson learned from Freddie

I learned a useful lesson yesterday regarding the importance of putting personality into my professional communications.

Subscribers to this blog will know that yesterday, when sending out an email letting you know about Spreadsheets by Email's January 20% off deal, I managed to call you all "Freddie"! This was the result of a copying and pasting error, entirely of my own doing.

I spotted the error and immediately fired off a new email to all subscribers apologising for my stupidity. What happened next surprised me. This brief apology email solicited many more replies than probably anything I have ever sent out. I started to look at the reasons for this and came to the conclusion - it clearly came from a human being!

Training as a Chartered Accountant, I was brought up to write professional reports and letters (it was the 1990s!). Clearly professionalism has its place but things have changed - with the amount of information flying into everyone's Inbox these days, personality is the only thing that makes any communication stand out. I like to think that there is some personality in my emails to individuals but when sending an email (or a blog post) that is aimed at a group I tend to get a bit dry and professional.

Following my little "Freddie" incident however, I have hopefully learned a valuable lesson. In future I will try to ensure that there is more of "me" in my emails and blog posts. You will let me know when I slip up and revert to being boring and professional, won't you?


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Two personal milestones this week

This week marks two personal milestones for me:

1. I turn 39 tomorrow (Friday), only one year to go until the big 4-0. It's now going to take some serious cramming to hit the 'millionaire by 40' goal!
2. I have only just noticed that the previous post, Do you build your spreadsheets yourself?, was the 100th post on this blog. Not exactly prolific but I am pleased at how the volume of information builds up if you keep at it, and it seems a milestone worth noting (to me anyway).

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The Ezine is dead, long live the Blog!

Following the comments on the previous post I have decided to stop the monthly ezine associated with the blog, to allow me to spend more time on the content of the blog. Subscribers to the ezine will continue to receive notification of new blog posts by email as before.

Thank you to all of our readers and I hope you continue to follow these articles by email or RSS.


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Blog, Ezine or both - please let me know?

I am considering a slight change to the format of Not Just Numbers and would like to get some feedback from readers.

Not Just Numbers started as a monthly ezine and then extended to include this blog. The blog includes all of the articles that are in the ezine as well as many posts that are not. Subscribers to the ezine receive regular emails with links to the latest blog posts - as well as the ezine.

On the face of it, the time spent compiling and formatting the ezine adds no new content for readers who receive the articles anyway in the blog digest emails. I feel that this time might be better spent adding extra content to the blog.

Before I make this change, I would really like to find out what readers think. So, please comment on this post with any preferences you have either way. I look forward to hearing what you have to say.





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Excel Resources for Accountants

by Glen Feechan

Now that Not Just Numbers has been running for a while, I thought that it might be useful to pull together a number of the Excel resources available on the blog and from the Feechan Consulting Group.

Regular readers will know that I am a big fan of Pivot Tables and you can learn how to set one up with the following videos:

Free Excel 2003 Pivot Tables Video
Free Excel 2007 Pivot Tables Video

If you want to learn about Pivot Tables in more depth, there are two video training courses available from Feechan Consulting:

Introduction to Pivot Tables course
Advanced Pivot Tables Course

Sometimes a pivot table is great for doing the number crunching, but you wish to use the results in a more flexible layout - for example, a management accounts format. To do this you will need the GETPIVOTDATA function:

Excel Tip: Using GETPIVOTDATA (part 1)
Excel Tip: Using GETPIVOTDATA (part 2)

Pivot tables come into their own when analysing large amounts of data, which can come from existing software packages:

Why all finance directors need to know about ODBC

Or be keyed in:

Using Excel Pivot Tables with manual records

Often you need to look up data from elsewhere within a spreadsheet, maybe to add new data to the source data for a pivot table. To do this you use the VLOOKUP function:

Excel Tip: Using VLOOKUP
Learn VLOOKUP with this short, free video tutorial

A couple of other useful tips with many applications are given below:

Excel Tip: Dropdown boxes in Microsoft Excel
Excel Tip: Reporting by year or month

Although I try to avoid macros where possible, sometimes you just need to automate a repetitive task:

Free Video: Record a Macro in Excel

A number of useful functions are discussed above, but here is a useful way to get to grips with an Excel function:

Excel Tip: Use any Excel function in seconds

For a useful application that ties many of these techniques together, have a read of:

Do your management accounts take weeks, days, hours, minutes…or seconds to prepare?

If you still don’t feel you are able to produce the spreadsheet you want, or you don’t have the time, why not get us to do it for you – quickly and cost-effectively with Spreadsheets by Email?

Or if your requirements are more complex, including reporting from your own systems, call Feechan Consulting.



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Customer service: the role of the back office

What effect poor back-office customer service can have

by Emily Coltman


Some weeks ago I bought a new top from a chain of shops whose nearest branch to me is Newcastle. That’s 50 miles away from my home.

The top developed a fault and so, rather than take it back, I sent it to the chain’s national centre, asking for either a refund or a replacement.

This weekend, the replacement duly arrived, nicely wrapped in tissue paper and sent in a strong cardboard box.

But there wasn’t a letter to accompany it. Just a form written in gobbledygook, of which the only words I could understand were “authorised” and “returned”, and a flyer suggesting I recommend the company’s products to a friend.

If the new garment hadn’t had labels on it, I would have been unsure whether the chain had actually replaced it or just sent the old one back.

I’d say that’s poor customer service – and it would be down to the packaging department at the national centre. Not to a member of the shop-floor staff.

I’d have liked to have seen, in that cardboard box, a personal letter addressed to me, apologising for the fault, explaining that they’d put in a replacement, and assuring me that the replacement didn’t have the same fault and they would replace it or send me a voucher if one developed.
What I received was what I might call generic customer service.

Service where the systems in the back-office behind the sales front line are so rigid and inflexible that the customer ends up feeling like a hot dog. No, I don’t mean that as in a dog panting from this heatwave that Britain is suffering at the moment (hooray for the North of England and cooler weather says this expat Southerner). I mean the identical sausages.

Hugh Williams, in his book “Proper Coffee and Other Ways to Grow Your Business”, describes an occasion where a top industrialist wanted to change his car.

He first of all went to Garage A. He found a suitable car and the garage said that it would get back to him with a trade-in price on his old car. As far as we know, he still hasn’t heard back from it.

The next garage he approached was Garage B and the salesman, who told us the story, said that he took the car to be tested, which was full of petrol, out to the industrialist’s home so that he could try it for a day. The salesman then took the car to be traded-in back to his garage and when he returned it, not only had the old car been valeted but it too had a full tank of petrol.

The next garage to be approached was Garage C. The industrialist drove the car away on a trial run. Within three miles, the petrol light came on and when, a few miles later, he turned the car to go back to the garage, the windscreen washer light also came on.

At this point, the industrialist said to himself, “I can’t be doing with all this inefficiency from Garages A and C. I am definitely going to buy the car from Garage B as it knows how to look after me.”

The same thing as happened to that man at Garage C happened to me when I was looking for my second car. I had to put £10 of petrol in one car I test-drove, just to get it back to the garage. I didn’t buy from them.

This story also highlights the importance of how back-office staff can impact on customer service.

At Garage B, do you think it was the salesman himself who valeted the car and filled both cars up with petrol?

And at Garage C, would it have been the salesmen’s job to see that the cars available for purchase were kept filled with petrol and washer fluid?

No. In both cases it would be the job of the back-office team, the mechanics.

How can an FD help?

So what back-office systems could the finance department put in place to help improve customer service?

Here are a few of my suggestions.

• First and foremost, remember that your customer is likely to be a layman, not an accountant. That means:

• Use plain English. Make sure any letters to customers, any documents they receive such as quotes, invoices, statements, remittance advices, etc. etc are written in plain English and clearly understandable.

• Explain any figures you supply. A layman won’t know what on earth a “debtor days” ratio is. Show how it’s worked out and explain, in plain English of course, what it means.

• Use graphs, especially bar charts, line graphs and pie charts, to illustrate your figures. A picture is worth a thousand words. And make them colourful – no boring black and white.
  

• Remember your customers could be internal as well as external. If you’re supplying a monthly report to the Board of Directors, the Board are your department’s customers. (Honest.)
• Try and make it fun for your customers to interact with you. I know you probably won’t be able to make like the fish market staff in Fish! and start throwing fish to each other, but hey, if this guy can make the safety briefing on an aeroplane fun…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivjybzdXVmI

Conclusion

So yes, it is vitally important to train your front-line staff in good customer service.
But it’s just as important, if not more so, to set up systems for your back-office staff to make sure that they support your customers and make them feel special, too.

Because without good back-office systems, sales are lost. As the car story proves.

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IT Expenditure - putting the cart before the horse

Why businesses spend huge amounts on ineffective IT investments.

by Glen Feechan


Another IT White Elephant!
It seems that almost every day we read in the newspapers about another hideously over budget IT project that doesn’t achieve its expected benefits. The ones we read about are usually major multi-million pound projects in the public sector, however this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Many more projects achieve similar results in the private sector, in organisations large and small. These may be anything from the purchase of a new off-the-shelf accounting package for an SME, or a large-scale fully-integrated ERP implementation across multiple sites and countries. These do not usually make the headlines due to the commercially sensitive nature of this information.

Does this mean that the technology is over-rated or that we cannot manage IT implementations or is there something fundamentally wrong with the approach?

Where are we going wrong?

“Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.”
Andy Rooney, US news commentator (1919 - )

I wouldn’t go as far as the above comment, however there is an element of truth in it.

Typically the IT implementation is seen as the solution to the particular problem (or problems) being addressed, but this is rarely the case. Often the introduction of an IT “solution” can compound a problem as there is now less opportunity for the human intervention that previously stopped problems from becoming crises.

The problems usually lie in the business processes (both formal and informal), irrespective of whether these are carried out by computers or human beings. Automating these processes can simply have the effect of making the problems happen faster!

The obsession with IT as the solution to every major business issue is compounded by the marketing departments and sales people of software developers selling it as such. Until executives address the underlying processes first, we will continue to see streams of failed, expensive IT projects.

Addressing the real problem

To take a process approach to the problem, we need to understand (in some depth) the informal processes carried out every day by employees. These are not the processes that managers think they carry out, and are rarely as laid out in the ideal world of an ISO manual. We regularly find, when working with clients’ employees, that managers are unaware of a large percentage of the processes carried out in ensuring that the job gets done. This is not a criticism of the managers - the level of information overload that this would involve would render them ineffective.
Working with employees so that they can map out their processes in this level of detail and re-engineer them to resolve the perceived problems can have a radical effect with no IT expenditure.

Targeted IT Expenditure

So far I have probably given the impression that I have a “downer” on IT. This could not be further from the truth - the problem I have is with the way IT expenditure is usually approached, and the problems that this approach creates.

Having addressed the process issues, IT expenditure can then be used to facilitate the new process, targeting those areas that would benefit most and significantly multiplying the benefits of the process improvement exercise itself. This expenditure can often be in entirely different areas to those originally envisaged.

Conclusion

Organisations have benefited greatly from IT investments over recent decades and will continue to do so. However, the risks attached to these investments are significantly reduced (and the resulting benefits significantly magnified) if the underlying, informal processes are addressed first.

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