Touched by the hand(over) of God

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A prospect of mine, who happily became a customer too and later a good friend, once described buying application software, a bit like switching on the radio. (that would be the Roberts DAB radio in this day and age obviously. Not what oldies might lackadaisically call the 'wireless').

The sale is like BBC radio1. Bangin' tunes, DJs all over you, Hip-Hop, Rap, Drum-n-Bass. Once the deal is done, in come the implementers, knocking out Mahlers 3rd in E-Flat! Yep, we have gone to BBC Radio3!

Please at this point dear reader, you will be feeling some empathy with me, if you have put a few projects in recently. The species Homo-Sales-Erectus differs vastly from Homo-implementationus, as this diagram clearly illustrates:

 

Well, in my former life, I was on occasions told to get my ar*e down to x as its a new deal we have won and they want to implement before y, make it happen will you? Being the obliging chap I am, I would endeavour to hit y and normally did, I had a reputation to preserve!

Still that's not the best way, sailing by the seat of your bottom, I can tell you honestly!

In fairness, its pretty much most suppliers I encounter, that suffer from this. Handover is not the best thought through bit of the contract progression. This inevitably leads to the customer going over so much old ground, that was covered in the PQQ, ITT, Demos and/or Contract Clarifications. For the exceptions to the rule, they do present a refreshing change, but they are definitely in the minority. As can be gleaned (humble suppliers, I know you read this blog..), customers are rarely amused.

Consider in your next software procurement / purchase, stipulate you would like your assigned project manager to read and digest all the paperwork that has gone prior, within the sales process and that your salesperson does a sensible handover, before initially contacting you to introduce themselves. That will save everyone a month or more, supplier complaints and a few brickbats.

Customers and Suppliers will get on better, Yin and Yang will be equalised to bring them both together to create something that is greater than the sum of the project parts.  Aesthetic balance, everyone efficiently working together. Peace on earth. Well maybe we will tackle that, after our latest project is in 8-) 


Related Post: Just procuring? If so, dont get fooled again.

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You can link with me on LinkedIn here - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy It would be great to connect !

New Order - Touched By The Hand Of God.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

PS As usual, if there are subjects you might like me to tackle on this blog, or you could benefit from any of our services please get in touch and let me know!

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You Got The Vlookup

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Wow, I have often joked that if I had charged everyone over the past 20 years £50 for every VLOOKUP problem in Excel I have ever solved, I would have my pension, right there. It would be a vast sum. However the easy going nature I have does not permit me to be anything else than helpful and sympathetic, whenever anyone asks me to solve one.

For a customer I have been doing lots of Excel manipulations lately and from the mark its left on me here is my contribution to VLOOKUP peace in the world.

Excel is great and VLOOKUP / HLOOKUP are in the premier league of functions to be mastered. Also probably the cause of many people giving up functions forever. Well, that's sad and if that's you, please I implore you, read on....

In this article I use both VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP interchangeably.

It seems simple, here's one I wrestled with earlier:
       =VLOOKUP(A2,Sheet2!C1:F10,22, TRUE)

So, the first hurdle is not going with the default, 'TRUE'. Spandau Barry tried to persuade us things could be 'True', but here it means 'find the best match you can'. OK if that's what you want, but on the whole it wont be. False, means do a direct match. Swap it now.

Check your values (either the one you are trying to match OR the area you are trying to find it) dont suffer from trailing spaces. You wont see them in the spreadsheet, only when you edit a cell and notice the cursor is not exactly at the end of your value to search. Use Trim() to remove any excess space characters.

Leading zeros in text formatted cells may also cause you problems. IE '009089' will not match as '9089'. This can happen a lot where data such as rent account IDs are infact textual, but look like numbers (ie having leading zeroes). Try multiplying by 1 or adding 0 to these values before searching OR within the first parameter of the VLOOKUP function. EG 'VLOOKUP( C2 + 0, ' or 'VLOOKUP( C2 * 1 , ' etc.  This will turn '009089' into '9089'.

Often people get one VLOOKUP working in a single cell, only to copy and find it only works some of the time. Well, fix your columns or ranges, using $. E.G. 
       =VLOOKUP(A2,Sheet2!$C$1:$F$10,22, TRUE)
So that when copied, the whole matrix searched is unchanged, when copied. This is sometimes called 'Reference Locking'.

The other 'Gotcha' is to define a range and then try to return a column to the left of the defined Table Array range. In this example, a range takes in columns C to F. Column 22 as a return value will never work. Extend the range to the right (ie C to X), in order to pick up the correct values.

Still getting #N/A, but quite obviously you can see a match?  I bet you are trying to locate a number. Have you considered utilising TRUNC( ?? , 0). Excel often will try to be clever and compare 6.7 with 6.700 and decide the values are not the same. Having numbers, that are actually just textual IDs, formatted as Text makes sense.

Excel macro's can also be problematic when adding VLOOKUPs to child links, having child links open first, makes a macro work better.

I hope this helps, you have cost my pension £50 chum, but I don't mind, I am doing my bit for world peace....

Related Post: Are your staff on top of Asset Sustainability & Living Wills? How do you start?

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You can link with me on LinkedIn here - uk.linkedin.com/pub/tony-smith-bsc-hons-acih/a/979/351/ It would be great to connect !

Prince - You Got The (v)Look(up) .


(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009

PS As usual, if there are subjects you might like me to tackle on this blog, please get in touch and let me know!

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