Technology and Productivity Solutions ( TAP Solutions)

Excel Solutions and Productivity Examples.

Case 1 Problem:

A retail call center manager needed to monitor the employee phone use. To do this, the manager needed the list of inbound and outbound calls as well as customer phone number information.  The manager had the list of calls from the phone system, and the corporate headquarters had the customer information. So, the manager had to manually input the info from both sources, which was extremely time-consuming.

Case 1 Solution:

TAP Solutions wrote an Excel macro that combined the two sources of information, so it was easier to determine if the employees were abusing their phone privileges; and, the manager was able to see the phone activity in each division, which in turn allowed them to balance out the call load, saving on costly overtime.

Case 2 Problem:

A large manufacturing company did business with a large multi-store retailer. Each shipment to each store created a receivable invoice. There were thousands of receivable invoices each month. When the retailer sent a check, it also sent an electronic report of what invoices it was paying. This was then entered by hand into the manufacturer’s system to clear out the invoices and balance the payment.

Case 2 Solution:

TAP Solutions wrote a routine that allowed the spreadsheet to be uploaded into the receivables system and match/clear the invoices automatically. It also identified problems that the user could quickly address.

Case 3 Problem:

A consulting firm required its employees to manually fill out monthly billing reports, which would then go to the billing department to be entered by hand. This resulted in a lot of paper. However, sometimes the consultant would forget to include some information on the report, resulting in incomplete billing for the month and lost revenue.

Case 3 Solution:

TAP Solutions created a master report sheet in Excel that consultants would fill out electronically while they were at the client or at the end of the day. It could be e-mailed in at any time. Then TAP Solutions created an Excel program that combined and re-formatted all the billing reports into a file that could be uploaded directly into the billing system, making it much easier to bill clients and keep monthly reports current. It also prevented errors inputting the data. 

Case 4 Problem:

A human resources department had a problem keeping its employees’ insurance reports in sync with the insurance company’s reports because each used a different data format and data structure. This caused the HR staff to have to manually reconcile the reports of more than 1,000 employees. This took some serious time! And numerous errors were missed.

Case 4 Solution:

TAP Solutions wrote an Excel program that matched employees’ names and addresses with their insurance packages, and highlighted inconsistencies between the two reports. It also took into account different data formats: for example, CA and California or 12/31/12 and December 31, 2012. Now, all the HR staff had to do was quickly glance at the spreadsheet and the errors would be easily seen. 

Case 5 Problem:

An online retailer downloaded her orders into an Excel file.  Then an employee created packing slips for her company’s shipping department by copying and pasting all the pertinent information into a Word template.  Customers did not put things in the correct format so she also had to correct this. This was extremely time consuming.

Case 5 Solution:

TAP Solutions created an Excel program that produced the packing slips with a click of a button and made formatting corrections automatically. The process now took seconds instead of hours.  

Case 6 Problem:

A window blind owner never knew how much material he needed for any single project. He would estimate, and put that figure into Excel. When he estimated too much, it cost him money. When he estimated too little, it delayed the project’s completion. Plus, he used Excel as if it were a paper spreadsheet

Case 6 Solution:

TAP Solutions used Excel to create an order worksheet for each order. Then when all the orders were entered into sheets, the program calculated how much material was needed for each order and how much material was needed for the group of orders.  The worksheet saved the company time and money because the owner didn’t order too much material and didn’t have to constantly reset his cutting machine.

Case 7 Problem:

A large retailer received a large amount of inquiries from its website’s inquiry form. When the staff went to read the emails, there was a large amount of spam mixed in. It took countless hours to go through all the emails, weed out the junk and copy the person’s information into the appropriate Excel spreadsheets.

Case 7 Solution:

TAP Solutions wrote an Excel macro that went through all the email, eliminated the junk mail and put the appropriate information into the appropriate sheets. The user then sent the correct sheet to the correct department.  

Case 8 Problem:

A manufacturer had a multi-store report with no page breaks come in from a vendor. Each store had to be its own page. The manufacturer had to manually go through the report and put in page breaks before printing. 

Case 8 Solution:

TAP Solutions wrote a macro that went through the large report and logically figured out the page breaks.