Accrual System · VMware, via Advantage · 2013
A spreadsheet that behaved like an application, because nothing else was allowed to run.
~2 months to build0 executables installed
01The situation
VMware needed an international financial accrual process: budget managers worldwide identifying revenue committed but not yet received, substantiating it, and reconciling it monthly into Oracle. The alternative on the table was a multi-year Oracle build.
02The constraint
- The corporate environment prohibited running arbitrary executables. No installed application was possible.
- The process still needed orchestration and the automated movement of thousands of email attachments.
- The substantiating documents were sitting in mailboxes, one per budget manager, spread across the world.
03What I built
7 LINES
- 01An Excel workbook with C# embedded in it, hand-built in 2013.
- 02It rendered its own ribbon bar across the top of the window.
- 03Worksheet tabs worked as application screens — some data tables, some styled as dashboards.
- 04It swept the user's mailbox for contracts carrying committed-but-unreceived revenue and surfaced them as selectable records.
- 05It base64-encoded the attachments straight out of the original emails — hundreds to thousands per budget manager — and pushed the records and their substantiating documents into Quickbase.
- 06A review-and-audit queue where senior managers approved or returned each item, and then froze the window.
- 07An export in Oracle's native format.
04Elapsed
- Joined Advantage
- August 2013
- Project identified
- Day one
- Built
- About two months
- The alternative on the table
- A multi-year Oracle programme
05What it produced
About two months of work, against a multi-year enterprise programme.
I found the project and started pursuing it on my first day at the company.