The tragedy of the “Excel Hero”

I want you to picture a person in your office. Let’s call him Steve.

Steve is a legend. Every Friday afternoon, he pulls data from your CRM, wrestles with the ERP, exports three different CSVs, and spends four hours stitching them together in a spreadsheet that is so complex it technically qualifies as a sentient being.

He delivers the report on Monday morning. Everyone says, "Thanks, Steve."

The problem is, Steve is wasting his time. And you are wasting Steve.

We talk a lot about "productivity," but it usually devolves into buzzwords. 

Real productivity, where it relates to business intelligence, is simple: it’s about asking a question, like "Did we make money on that project?", and getting an answer in five minutes, not five days.

I used the word “simple” deliberately here because getting to “simple” is often a complicated process.  

Fortunately, if you recognise your business in what we’ve been discussing so far, there are some tried-and-true paths we can take to get you there.

Most businesses I talk to don't need "Big Data" or AI magic. They just need to stop the wrestling match.

They are essentially "Greenfields" businesses. They have the data, but it’s scattered across little pockets throughout the company. Sales has a spreadsheet. Finance has Xero. Operations has a whiteboard.

This is where Business Intelligence (BI) actually delivers value. It’s not about building a dashboard that looks like the cockpit of a spaceship. It’s about creating the plumbing so the water flows where it’s supposed to.

When you bring in someone (like us) to put some structure around your intelligence, three things happen immediately:

Without a system, meetings start with 20 minutes of arguing about whose spreadsheet is right. BI creates a "Single Source of Truth." The argument stops being "is this data right?" and starts being "what do we do about it?"

Manual reporting is always backwards-looking. By the time Steve finishes his report, the data is a week old. Automated BI shifts you from "what happened last month?" to "what is happening right now?"

This is the big one. Manual reporting is a silent killer of talent. By automating the grunt work, the KPI tracking, the weekly reporting, you free up your smartest people to do strategic analysis.

Steve shouldn't be a data janitor. He should be a data architect.

Mahi Tahi: The productivity supergroup

At Montage, we fix the data plumbing. But we also know that data doesn't exist in a vacuum. That is why we are part of Mahi Tahi, a collective of New Zealand’s leading tech partners.

While we handle the intelligence, our partners handle the infrastructure, security, and automation. It means you get a complete solution, not just a piece of software.

If you are ready to retire the "Excel Hero" and start seeing your business clearly, let’s have a coffee.