Custom Software · DVS-CS-0101
Replacing a decade of spreadsheets with an operations platform
A mid-sized distributor ran scheduling, inventory, and invoicing across forty interlinked spreadsheets maintained by two people. We replaced them without stopping the business.
Engagement record
- Discipline
- Custom Software
- Sector
- Logistics & distribution
- Duration
- 14 weeks
- Client
- Confidential
- Stack
- TypeScript · PostgreSQL · React · Node.js · AWS · Terraform
The spreadsheets worked, which is precisely why they were dangerous. Institutional knowledge lived in formulas nobody else could read, month-end close took four days, and a single corrupted file could halt dispatch. Two previous attempts to move to off-the-shelf ERP had been abandoned because the business did not operate the way the software assumed.
- 01 Spent two weeks on-site tracing how work actually moved, not how the org chart said it did
- 02 Modelled the domain around the company’s real vocabulary rather than an ERP’s
- 03 Ran the new system in parallel with the spreadsheets for six weeks, reconciling nightly
- 04 Migrated cut-over by department rather than in a single weekend
- 05 Trained the two spreadsheet owners as the platform’s internal administrators
Month-end close moved from four days to under three hours. The company owns the repository, the cloud account, and a written architecture record. The two people who previously maintained the spreadsheets now administer the platform.