Services

Your data lives in a database. Your team works in Excel.

Your data lives in a database. Your team works in Excel.

I get the numbers out of MySQL, SQL Server and your ERP, clean them up, and hand them over as Excel workbooks your team can filter, pivot and trust. One-off extracts or reports that refresh every week.

Four ways I can help

Most clients start with one extract and end up with a report that runs itself. Pick the one that matches where you are.

Sometimes you just need an answer from your system, not a full reporting project. Tell me the question, such as last year’s orders by customer, every open works order, or stock by location, and I’ll pull the data directly from your ERP, MRP, CRM or SQL database. You get it back as a tidy, filterable Excel workbook with clear headings, sensible totals and notes on where the figures came from, ready to sort, share or take into a meeting.

Typical requests include:

  • Sales by customer, product or region for any period
  • Open works orders, overdue orders or late deliveries
  • Stock levels and values by location, including slow-moving items
  • Customer lists, price lists or supplier histories for a review or audit
  • Data checks before a system migration, acquisition or year-end

It’s a fixed-scope piece of work with a quick turnaround. If the same question keeps coming up, I can turn it into a Power BI report that updates automatically.

If someone in your team spends Monday morning exporting data, pasting it into a spreadsheet and fixing the formatting, that time can be saved. I use Power Query to connect your Excel workbooks directly to your ERP, MRP, CRM or SQL database, and build the cleaning and calculation steps in once. After that, you open the workbook, press Refresh, and the latest figures appear, laid out exactly as you’re used to seeing them.

Typical uses include:

  • Weekly sales reports by customer, product or rep
  • Open orders, works orders and delivery schedules
  • Stock valuations and reorder reports
  • Month-end packs and KPI summaries
  • Combining data from several systems into one sheet

Your team keeps working in Excel, with the formulas, pivot tables and charts they already know, but without the copying, pasting and errors that come with it. I can also document how it works so your team can maintain it.

Reports are only as good as the data behind them. Duplicate customers, product codes that don’t match between systems, dates and numbers stored as text, and half-filled records all quietly break your totals and undermine trust in the figures. I find these problems, fix them, and reconcile the numbers so that your systems agree with each other and with reality.

Common fixes include:

  • Merging duplicate customer and supplier records
  • Matching up codes that differ between your ERP, CRM and accounts
  • Converting dates and numbers stored as text so they sort and total correctly
  • Filling gaps and standardising inconsistent formats
  • Reconciling figures between systems, such as sales ledger against ERP, or stock records against a physical count

You choose how it’s done. I can correct the data at source in your live system, or clean it in the extract so your live system isn’t touched. Either way, you get a clear log showing exactly what changed, with the before and after values, and nothing is deleted without your agreement.

It’s especially worth doing before a system migration, after an acquisition, or before building new reports, so everything that follows starts from data you can trust.

Many businesses start with Excel, and that’s fine. When a workbook outgrows itself, you don’t have to start again. Excel’s Power Query and Power BI use the same engine, so the connections, cleaning steps and calculations I’ve already built move straight across into Power BI. Nothing is thrown away.

It’s usually time to move when:

  • The workbook is getting slow or too large to open comfortably
  • Several versions are being emailed around and nobody is sure which is right
  • More people need the figures, including on phones or tablets
  • Managers want to click into the numbers and see the detail behind them
  • You want the data to refresh on a schedule, without anyone opening a file

The move can happen one report at a time, with your Excel workbooks carrying on alongside until you’re ready. You get interactive dashboards that update automatically, controlled access so people see what’s relevant to them, and one version of the numbers for the whole business, all built on work you’ve already paid for.

Built by someone who has run the systems

For nine years I was IT Systems Manager for a manufacturer with 10 sites and around 200 users, looking after the ERP, the databases and the reports everyone relied on. Since then I’ve spent nine years as an independent IT and 16 years as a business systems consultant.

I know what a works order table looks like, why the delay codes never quite match, and what the production manager actually wants to see on a Monday morning. You deal with me directly, from first call to handover.

9 yrs
IT Systems Manager in multi-site manufacturing
9 yrs
Independent systems consultancy
10 yrs
Sites supported, around 200 users
1
Person doing the work, start to finish
Testimonials

What our clients say about us

  • While James was already engaged with us on another project, we brought in a business improvement consultant who required detailed sales and production information from our systems. This was data we had previously struggled to extract in a meaningful and timely way from our SysPro environment.

    We asked James whether it would be possible to retrieve and structure this information, despite him not having prior exposure to the SysPro database. He quickly demonstrated an impressive ability to understand the underlying data structure, identify where key information was stored, and determine how the various data tables and relationships connected.

    Within a short period of time, he was able to deliver the required datasets in a clear and usable format, meeting the consultant’s requirements and enabling the project to progress without delay.

    Our preferred method of working was through Excel-based reporting, and it became immediately apparent that James had exceptional Excel and data manipulation skills. He introduced us to parameter-driven data extraction techniques directly from the database into Excel, a capability we had not previously utilized, and which significantly improved our ability to interrogate and analyze business data.

    Following the success of this work, James also developed a number of interactive Excel-based tools that allowed users to access and analyse information far more efficiently. These solutions saved the business countless hours of manual reporting and significantly improved access to timely, accurate information.

    Overall, his ability to quickly understand complex systems, extract meaningful data, and deliver practical, user-friendly solutions had an immediate and lasting impact on our reporting capabilities.

    Kevin

  • We had years of sales data in ACT! CRM but no easy way to turn it into something the team could use. James built an automated report that pulls the key sales information and KPI performance straight from ACT! into Excel, which is exactly what we wanted. Better still, each regional rep automatically receives the figures for their own area, so everyone sees their own performance without anyone having to prepare or send it. It’s accurate, it’s on time every time, and it’s saved hours of manual reporting each month. I’d recommend James to any sales team that wants clear, reliable figures without the spreadsheet chasing

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    Antonia