A few examples:
1. A national distributor of medical devices had uses the #1 DME spftware for their Billing. Unfortunately, they could not set up their sales network on the product, and spent two weeks a month trying to figure out how to pay sales commissions. We built a tool that turned this into a 30 minute clerical exercise, managing all the sales exceptions and organizational issues. It also allows sales reports to go out daily, if desired.
2. A medical products distributor had 9 different business lines, and had SAP and several other software packages. They could not get a clear view of their business. We built a sales dashboard that integrated all of the product lines, calculated commissions, and sent sales reports out daily
3.An oil company had a complicated Salary and Bonus process. Numerous exceptions as to who get what individual for performance management and rewards calculations. They are also an SAP shop and cannot manage the process without spreadsheets. We automate the process - importing SAP data, storing data for international folks not on their SAP system, managing different currencies, different rating systems and policies in different busines units.
4. We built a tool to help a gas company account for reserves - doing the work of 2 full time analysts.
That kind of koolaide.
I’m glad for you and I am sure you have created a viable small to medium business model relying on microsoft excel. But “a 30 minute clerical exercise” is still what I consider hand holding. Granted anything with a gui, would by definition require human intervention.
Excel is just not my development environment of choice. It’s a fine stop gap measure. Look if I was hired to develop in it, I would do so gladly.
I’m probably just bitter because they blew Lotus 1-2-3 out of the water and never looked back. : )