Almost nobody asks for what they need

A spreadsheet that would pull together information from several departments and produce a monthly indicator. A week's work, according to the person who asked.

The information was not in several departments. It was in several versions of several files, and each department kept its own. The requested indicator was calculated differently in each version, so there was no single number to pull together. On top of that, part of what they wanted to measure was not being captured anywhere.

A full measurement system: structured capture at source, a data model with one definition per indicator, automated reporting on top, and, inside the same scope, the staff satisfaction instrument needed to close the indicator.

The report stopped depending on a person assembling it. The monthly discussion went from which file was right to what to do about the result.

An automated staff register for human resources, to serve as the basis for running a workplace climate survey on paper. Attendance, leave, hires and departures were kept on handwritten cards in filing cabinets.

There was not a single digital file. On the first visit, the person running human resources had a bag holding the whole staff's cards and was copying them out by hand into a text document. The problem was not a badly automated process. It had never been designed, it had no owner, and nothing they wanted to measure was being captured anywhere. And the complete staff record existed in one place, on paper, with no backup and no plan for the day it was lost.

Structured capture at source: hire and departure forms, and online leave requests, over a database holding the staff's demographic and employment information. Automated reporting with scheduled delivery on top. The climate survey was run over messaging instead of on paper, with questions written for the purpose: what had been asked for was a copy of the questionnaire and method of a well known proprietary instrument, and copying it was not an option. The intake form now prints the attendance card, so the paper that was genuinely needed comes out of the system instead of being written by hand.

The process was entirely manual and today it is semi-automated, which is as far as the scope went. You can see by department who is on the payroll and keep an attendance record that reconciles. An error that had been running for a while turned up, and the discussion stopped being about which card was right.