Case Studies
The case studies below illustrate how I work in practice: starting with real business problems, understanding how data flows through an organisation, and designing spreadsheet-based solutions that people actually use.
Whether it’s streamlining a time-consuming process or building reports that bring clarity and confidence, the focus is always on practical outcomes that make a real difference to how the business operates.
From 3 days to 20 minutes
Transforming a manual spreadsheet process
Reporting That Makes an Impact
Creating visibility to support strategic change
Reducing a critical monthly process from 3 days to 20 minutes
The Context
The organisation was an e-commerce marketplace with around 400 clients selling to end customers in multiple countries and currencies.
Each month, the small finance team needed to produce detailed client statements summarising orders, refunds, and various deductions for commissions and fees. These statements were business-critical, forming the basis for the payments made to the clients.
The Challenge
The process was well established, but it took approximately 3 days each month to complete.
The existing spreadsheet contained around 400 worksheets, one per client in the format of the final statement. Each worksheet included sections for different transaction types, calculations on every row related to commission, tax, shipping, and payment processing fees, as well as currency conversions into GBP where applicable.
Despite using some modern Excel functionality, the spreadsheet had become unmanageable and had created a finance bottleneck. It was:
- Extremely time-consuming as the individual worksheets had to be manually checked and updated every month
- Difficult to review and maintain
- Prone to inconsistency and hidden errors, including formulas overwritten with hard-coded values
I was asked to review the process and see whether it could be improved.
The Solution
Rather than attempting to refine the existing process, I stepped back and looked at the underlying structure.
It quickly became clear that the complexity didn’t come from the calculations themselves, but from the way data was organised and the fact that calculations were repeated across hundreds of worksheets.
The solution focused on:
- Separating data, logic, and presentation
- Creating a single ‘master’ table containing all client-specific variables
- Automating data preparation and calculations with Power Query
- Adding a simple VBA “one-click” button to generate all 400 statements automatically once the calculations were refreshed
- Making the process repeatable, transparent, and easier to scale
The Result
The entire solution was developed, tested, and ready for use within a few weeks. The impact was immediate and significant:
- Processing time was reduced from 3 days to 20 minutes.
- Data refresh and recalculation were completed in under 5 minutes.
- Manual checking was largely eliminated.
- Consistency of calculations was restored.
There were also some additional ‘new’ outputs:
- A journal worksheet ready for upload into the finance system
- A single, comprehensive dataset that was available to the operational team for further analysis
Although the long-term plan was to build this process into the order management system, the new solution provided a viable interim alternative, delivering considerable time savings and improved accuracy.
Delivering Reporting That Makes an Impact
The Context
I joined a managed print services business at the start of a major ERP implementation project. The goal was to replace multiple legacy systems with Microsoft Dynamics AX, bringing Finance, Sales, and Service data into a single platform for the first time. As Financial Controller, I was the finance lead on the implementation.
The Challenge
Before the system change, accessing reliable data was difficult. Reporting depended on standard reports or IT-written extracts, information was fragmented across systems, and it was hard to meaningfully analyse performance across time, customers, and teams.
Once the new system went live, there was suddenly a rich source of integrated data available, but little reporting existed as priority had been given to the system build. As an AX super-user with strong Excel skills, I was well-placed to build reporting to support the wider organisation.
What I Delivered
The most impactful work fell into two areas:
- Sales performance reporting designed to improve transparency and drive behaviour change
- Service performance reporting created to fill a critical post go-live gap
Sales reporting: making growth visible
Sales targets had historically focused on revenue from equipment sales and leases. One of the business’s key strategic metrics, “machines in the field”, was tracked at an overall level but was not used to assess individual or team performance.
This created a blind spot. Some sales activity replaced existing machines without growing the customer base, generating revenue but not long-term value. This behaviour was suspected but difficult to evidence.
Working closely with the MD and Sales Director, I designed standardised one-page reports at overall, team and individual salesperson levels. They all followed the same structure:
- A rolling 12-month column chart of machines in the field, by device type
- A summary of additions and reductions in the month, by customer
- A rolling 12-month line chart for meter billing revenue
- A summary of top 10 customers by meter revenue (monthly and rolling)
It was immediately obvious from these one-pagers where growth was happening and where it wasn’t.
For the first time, senior leadership could see whether sales activity was expanding the installed base or simply replacing it, how customer value evolved over time, and how individual and team performance aligned with business strategy.
These reports became a core management tool and were later used to reshape the sales commission structure, placing greater emphasis on new business and sustainable growth rather than short-term revenue.
Service reporting: restoring visibility after go-live
Before the ERP implementation, the Service team relied on a suite of daily operational reports covering engineer activity, response times, and first-time fixes. This information was critical to running the department effectively and ensuring SLAs were met.
Due to project time constraints, these reports couldn’t be rebuilt before AX went live, leaving the team with limited ability to monitor operational performance. I was asked to step in and bridge the gap.
Coordinating with the Service Director, I identified the relevant call-handling and engineer data within AX, recreated the most critical daily reports in Excel, and refined the layouts and metrics until they matched operational needs.
The result was a set of straightforward, usable reports that allowed the Service team to maintain operational oversight after go-live. Once the formats were agreed, they were handed over to IT as a ‘proof of concept’, providing clear blueprints to speed up the development of permanent system-generated alternatives.
How This Shaped My Work Today
The work outlined in the second case study, and the wider ERP implementation project, marked a turning point in my career. This was where I began moving away from traditional finance roles into work focused on processes, data, and systems. I saw first‑hand how much impact practical problem-solving, thoughtful process design and well‑structured reporting could have, not just for finance, but across an entire organisation. That realisation shaped the path that eventually led me to create Sphormic Solutions.
If you’re facing challenges with your spreadsheet-based processes and want to explore practical ways forward, I’d be happy to talk.