Only One Person Understands the Spreadsheet That Runs Your Operation

If the one person who understands a critical spreadsheet leaves, the business loses the ability to run and change that process, often overnight. The fix is to move the knowledge out of that person’s head and their workbook into an application whose rules are written down and built in, so that any trained employee can do the work and the company owns its own process.

Signs this is your problem

• Questions about the spreadsheet all go to the same person.
• That person is reluctant to take a long vacation.
• Others are told not to touch certain tabs or cells.
• Training a new hire means sitting next to that person for weeks.
• You are thinking about selling the business or bringing in a partner.

How a company ends up here

Nobody plans it. A capable employee builds a spreadsheet to solve a real problem. It works, so more is added: tabs, formulas, macros, colour codes, a few rules that are never written down because the author simply knows them. Years later the company’s scheduling, pricing or ordering lives in a file that only its author can safely change.

That person is usually one of your best people. The problem is not them. It is that the business has no copy of what they know.

What is really at risk

• Daily operations. When they are away, work waits or mistakes are made.
• Their time. A valuable employee spends their week keeping a file alive.
• Growth. A process that depends on one person cannot be given to a second shift, a second office or a new hire.
• The value of the company. A buyer or lender sees a business that walks out of the door every evening.

Turning one person’s knowledge into the company’s system

We sit down with the person who built the spreadsheet. They are the expert, and the project works best when they are at the centre of it. Together we write down every rule the workbook applies, including the ones that are only in their head. Those rules are then built into an application that applies them the same way every time, for whoever is using it.

The employee does not lose their importance. They get their time back, and they usually become the person who knows the new system best.

How Keene Systems handles it

1. We learn the process from the person who knows it. With them, not around them.
2. We write the rules down in plain English. You review them, which often settles long-running questions about how things should work.
3. We build the application. The rules are enforced by the system, so they no longer depend on memory.
4. We train the team. More than one person can now run the process.

The next step is a short, no-pressure conversation. Book a call with Lance Keene or use the form on this page.