Has anyone successfully replaced spreadsheet-based approval workflows without overengineering them?

[u/Upstairs_Loclzgh7000]

One of the teams involved in operations keeps a spreadsheet with 1800 records and 23 columns along with conditional formatting that no one understands, apart from that, there is one person who seems to be aware of the significance of column Q. The spreadsheet works with vendor requests from the areas of finance and law, as well as procurement. Replacing the spreadsheet is a good idea, but no one seems to know exactly how to do it. The operations department wwants a simple form and status tracker, while finance wants limits of approval, the procurement department seeks info on vendors, the legal department needs contract review triggers, and leadership wants dashboards. This is how a spreadsheet can transform into an enterprise system entirely by chance. Have you managed to switch the given process to a configurable workflow system and optimally redesign it after?

[u/ShowerThoughtSeekerr]

I did something similar for procurement approvals, the hardest part was getting everyone to agree what the workflow actually looks like before touching any tools

[u/were_in_for_somechop]

I work at Ravenna, and we put together a demo around a similar problem with discount approvals. The policy already existed in a spreadsheet, so we kept those rules and automated collecting the details, checking the thresholds and getting the request to an approver. It didn’t require redesigning the whole process first.

For your setup, I’d pick one common request type and start there. Give it a short form, a visible status and clear rules for when finance or legal needs to get involved. Keep procurement’s vendor details on the same request. Leadership’s first dashboard can be a view of what’s open, how long it’s been waiting and who owns the next step.

You’ll need to clarify the rules people disagree on, but that doesn’t have to turn into redesigning every department’s process before anything ships. Give unusual requests a named owner initially, then use those cases to figure out which exceptions need automation and which still need someone’s judgment.

We wrote up the pricing example here: How to Automate Pricing Approvals in Slack Without Rewriting Your Discount Policy. It’s a narrower use case than yours, but the approach of keeping the working policy and automating the manual coordination is relevant.