Earlier in the year, when we received a request for a trial account from “Elf HQ, 1, North Pole”, they were asking for a smart Christmas system. At first we thought it was a joke.
No Laughing Matter
But it soon became clear that Santa’s Elf Army was in crisis
| Year | Children below 15 |
|---|---|
| 1960 | 1.0 billion |
| 1980 | 1.4 billion |
| 2000 | 1.75 billion |
| 2015 | 1.9 billion |
With almost double the number of children since the 1960s, their hard working ethic and well-honed procedures for planning, production, storage and delivery of a mountain of presents, they were barely able to cope.
The Chief Elfministrator explained that moving from paper to computer-based processes had initially made a big difference. But they gradually became reliant on on a web of large complicated spreadsheets.
It was a Spreadsheet Nightmare!
After extensive research on the blog, they realised they were not alone in relying on the wrong tool for critical operations. They had to decide between doing things “the Hard Way or the Smart Way?”
Following a serious incident in 2014 where two children nearly received the wrong presents they had to act and contacted us.
Fighting Spreadsheet Spaghetti
A quick prototype showing how to transform their “spreadsheet spaghetti” into controlled business processes made them determined to request Santa’s permission to implement LiveDataset in time for Christmas. They showed him some use cases, but the presentation that clinched the deal was:
See Santa’s New Smart Christmas System
Merry Christmas
the LiveDataset team