Simplification of processes
Time savings through automation / digitalisationThe goal
An existing customer contacted us and asked for help.
Every year, they have to compile and compare data that comes from different sources and is available in different formats (Excel, text files, CSV files). This data is then analysed and at the end a report is created in which the data can be compared at a glance.
Currently, this work is done manually with the help of Excel. This is a very time-consuming and repetitive task.
The question now was whether we could automate this process so that employees could devote their time to other tasks.
Spoiler alert! Yes, we could 😊
Current situation
Every month our customer receives over 40 text files. Some of these have to be assembled at the end of the year, others per trimester, semester or even every 3 months.
The data is then completed with information from another data source and calculated. These calculations are in turn transferred to a file with data from another data source, where they are then compared.
As you can see, the topic is very complex and so you can imagine that it takes a lot of time to carry out these steps manually, even if you use formulas in Excel.
The challenge
As the data comes from different sources and there are different file formats, there were several challenges with the whole thing.
For example, there is the fact that the separators of the numbers are not the same in all files. This causes problems when evaluating and calculating.
Or that, depending on the setting in Windows, the separators of a date are different, or that Excel tends to interpret strings as numbers instead of text.
All of this is monitored in our programming and adapted accordingly so that the file can also be executed on different PCs without the user having to adapt anything.
The result
According to the client, our programming saves them around 2 weeks of time. That's 10 working days that users can spend on other activities.
Another advantage is that this simplification will make it possible in the future to carry out calculations in between in order to make spot checks. This also allows proactive work to be carried out and any differences in the data records do not only become apparent at the end of the year, when it becomes stressful to obtain the corrected data required for billing.
We are always delighted when we can help our customers to simplify their work and we would like to thank them for their trust.