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The challenge: provide route managers of a food products company with an easy-to-use tool for tracking sales out and “Stock needed” information. Cost was a concern. Using a familiar tool versus learning a new tool was desired. Real-time access could not be a required. Microsoft Excel was the obvious solution but how to get the information from the route mangers without introducing a large learning curve.
Distributed Spreadsheet met the requirements and a sample of the resulting workbook can be downloaded from the Community Forum section of the Distributed Spreadsheet web site.
Using a variety of Excel features, a worksheet was created that provided drop-down boxes for selecting products sold or needing to be ordered. Names of accounts were selected from drop downs menus. Costs of orders were quickly calculated in order for the store owner to be able to immediately approve the order. Extensive use of comments helps guide users as to what information needs to be collected.
Installing Distributed Spreadsheet allowed the route manager to collect the inventory and order information 1 store at a time and forward this information back to the home office at the end of each week with 2 simple mouse clicks.
Looking at the alternative methods of capturing the customer’s information, Distributed Spreadsheet was easily the lowest cost alternative while also bringing the lowest cost of implementation and lowest impact to the data communications budget.
If you have questions about this application of Distributed Spreadsheet, please drop a note to info@distributedspreadsheet.com.
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