Most teams don’t wake up one morning and say, “Let’s build a dashboard.” What usually happens is much messier: reports live in multiple Excel files, different people maintain different versions, and no one is 100% sure which sheet is “final”.
This case study walks through how we helped one operations team move from that chaos to a reliable, live dashboard — without forcing everyone to change their daily routine on day one.
1. The starting point: 14 Excel files and zero trust
When we joined, the client’s reporting system looked something like this:
- 14+ Excel workbooks shared on email and WhatsApp
- Multiple “version 3 (final) – edited” type files
- Weekly time spent just reconciling differences between sheets
- No single, trusted view that leadership could open and rely on
Our first step was not to write code, but to map who was updating what, and when. That gave us a picture of the real workflow instead of the theoretical one.
2. Approach: Respect the Excel, strengthen the system
Instead of asking everyone to stop using Excel, we used a three-layer approach:
Layer 1 — Data capture stays familiar
For the first phase, field teams continued to enter data in the same Excel templates. We only standardised:
- Column names and order
- Basic validations (dates, numeric ranges, required fields)
- File naming conventions, so automation scripts could recognise them
Layer 2 — An automated pipeline behind the scenes
We then set up a small pipeline that:
- Watched a shared folder where new files were dropped
- Automatically cleaned and merged the data into a central database
- Logged any anomalies (missing values, wrong formats) for quick follow-up
This meant the team could keep “living in Excel”, while the system upgraded itself to a more reliable backend.
Layer 3 — A dashboard that answers real questions
With the data flowing into a structured store, we built a dashboard focused on the questions leadership actually asked in meetings:
- “Which location is falling behind this week?”
- “How do last month’s numbers compare to our target?”
- “If we had to visit only three sites tomorrow, which ones matter most?”
Each chart was labelled in plain language, with simple filters and no jargon.
3. Outcomes in the first 60 days
After two months of running this system side-by-side with the old workflow, the team saw:
- 80% reduction in time spent compiling weekly reports
- One single source of truth for all operational KPIs
- Fewer last-minute “Can you resend that file?” messages
- Leadership using the dashboard live in review calls
The important part: we reached this point without a big-bang change, and without asking busy field staff to learn a brand new tool on day one.
4. Lessons we now reuse with other teams
For similar projects, we keep coming back to a few principles:
- Don’t fight the current process on day one. Use it as a bridge, then gradually tighten quality.
- Automate around people, not against them. The best systems feel like magic, not extra work.
- Start with decisions, not charts. Every graph should help someone decide what to do this week.
If your team is also stuck in Excel-but-can’t-let-go mode, it’s usually a sign that the data is valuable — it just needs a more reliable home.