Method Births Magic
I have designed a certain method, somewhere between what I would like to term an algorithm and a process.
If a computer program performed this process, it would definitely be an algorithm. Since it’s semi-manual, it falls more under “process.”
When I show it to people here (many of whom have spent years working with SAP), I present it like I would a magic trick. There is a patter, timed pauses, flourishes of Excel style.
The flow of action is simple. There is, literally, nothing up my sleeve. Two formulas, a sort, and a row deletion are all that is required. When I’m done, my audience gets that look on their faces (just like a magic show audience), like, “Oh, now. You got me there. Back up a step and let me see that again.”
What does my little trick do? It converts an outline view to a table view.
This is what SAP does to a company. Business schools trumpet the benefits of ERP: standardization, automation, unified data architecture.
Fine, but don’t dictate that I can’t pull data out of the system in a natively machine-readable format!
How can you get away with designing a program that can’t produce reports, but works against all methods to produce reports outside of the system?
Anyway, getting stuff in tabular view means it can be pulled into a database and made to do the acrobatics that such formats allow. It’s saving a lot of time.