Pivot to the Rescue

Sometimes simple is all you need. Last month I was asked to help out in automating an activity that was needlessly taking up time. Usually when people come to me, they think “program” but sometimes formulas or pivot tables will do the job just as well. In this instance, they needed to restructure some reporting data into another kind of report. Pivot tables alone wasn’t going to work though because the data came in a “prettified” form, i.e., with lots of spaces but that form was not in a format required. Apparently, there was a specific reporting requirement.

I could have done a VBA program but I did want them to be able to use the file itself as a template to learn how to set up these things in the future. Not that I didn’t want to create these solutions; I’m more than happy to help out. But I bet they have a ton of work processes that could be sped up via pivot tables and formulas rather than manually doing things. A ton of them.

I’m hoping that if they learn how to do pivot tables and how to set up formulas, using my template as a suggestion, they will then apply it to other areas and really speed up their work.

One lady was spending four hours a month doing a particular report. The template I created cut it down to maybe 20 minutes. She was ecstatic.

I hope this is a start of something big.