Madrin's real problem wasn't technology — it was spreadsheets

When people picture "bringing tech into a business," they imagine something flashy. The reality is usually far more boring — and far more valuable.

My mum runs Madrin Merchandising. Her team of reps is spread right across the country, out in stores every day. Before we changed anything, here's how one simple thing — getting the team paid — actually worked:

• Each rep filled in their call report on an Excel spreadsheet.
• They emailed it in.
• Someone copied every report, by hand, into a master spreadsheet.
• That master sheet was used to work out everyone's hours.
• Those hours were then re-typed into Xero to run payroll.

Five steps. Two of them are just copying numbers from one place to another — every single week. That's where the hours quietly go, and that's where the mistakes creep in.

Before you can automate anything, you have to see the whole messy process — end to end.

So the first thing we did wasn't build anything. It was map that. Once it's laid out in front of you, the fix is obvious: stop the copying. The call report a rep fills in should be the same data that works out their hours and lands in Xero — with nothing re-typed in between.

That one realisation is what the next few weeks of building are all about.