Spreadsheets are a great place to start with workflow automation!
Most people are familiar with spreadsheets to some extent – although not everyone realises how powerful they can be. It’s likely that you already have some handy spreadsheets you’re using in your day-to-day business. Wouldn’t it be great if you could get these spreadsheets to do X, Y, Z as well?
Maybe there’s a tedious, manual process you find yourself repeating over and over again – wouldn’t it be good to automate that? Or maybe you’re looking for more consistency in your business processes – how can you make sure things are done the right way every time?
Adding automation and validation to your spreadsheets and documents is a great way to make them more efficient and more robust. Plus, it’s easy to make further updates in future, if needed. And everyone who’s familiar with Excel, Word etc. will be able to use them.
This is where I started out on my journey into automation – making spreadsheet tools to extract environmental data, process them and put them into reports. It was the fastest way to create time-saving tools that could be used instantly by everyone in my team.
Of course, you cannot automate everything with a spreadsheet – nor should you try! There are some tasks that are better handled another way, e.g. using a database or a Python script. I am happy to advise on what’s best for your project, so please get in touch to discuss.