Wait, I will just take 5 Minutes to compare these 2 files..
Hey X, can you please finish comparing these files for me..something is not working
Hey X, can you please help me out in Excel? you know, I’m not made for it at all..
Over my 15+ Years of experience, working either directly in the finance department as SAP Key User, or later, as SAP consultant, I was able to gather many useful insights.
Yes, the three sentences I used to start this post are what I was hearing every single day. And not only in one company. And yes, the guy who was helping the others was me š
This basically means Iām only about 15 years late in launching this tool, but I still see the need for it.
Let me clarify, there is actually competition also in this area, but in my opinion, it doesn’t satisfy the heterogeneous demand. What do I mean by that:
As you can see, the 3 sentences come from persons completely different in the mean of approaching working on Excel. Or avoid it, although they need it:
1- The expert
2- The average user
3- The user that would cry just by opening Excel
The products available now on this market (comparing files), are made to fulfill the needs of the expert, and they are possibly partially attracting the average user, but only those who are willing to go through a learning curve. It takes time to understand all the options available, what to click and what not.
Category 3 is of course still crying as it is not considered.
This is where and why Sheetmatcher comes into the game. The reason behind it is to give a really simple tool at disposal to everyone, so that the task can be managed quickly, with no risks, and just move on.
Following a simple 3-step process you will drag and drop 2 files, just select the Key/ID column(-s) and press Compare.
In a matter of seconds, you will get a color-coded report that shows missing records, missing columns, and discrepancies (value file 1 vs value file 2).
That easy!
There are also checks in background, that assist you and advise you if you select for example the wrong column as Key (duplicate checks).
You don’t even need to rearrange the columns, as the order doesn’t matter: the match is done by column names.
Great, but now the experts are left out and crying! Nope š
First, they will also speed up the task with a factor of X times and secondly, there are advanced features that can be activated just in case.
I believe they are great, and I don’t see them somewhere else:
- Use a mapping file to map the Keys in case they are different -> by activating this, you can drag and drop a third file containing just the mapping of all the ID side by side. The tool will use them in the comparison process, that otherwise it would completely fail
- Text-based search to use names as Key (showing % of success rate) -> sometimes, you don’t have any codes or IDs available to compare 2 list, but just for example the names of something. By enabling this, you will be able to start the matching process!
I hope I could give you enough background information about this product, and I’m willing to hear your thoughts.
Stay productive!
Cheers
Francesco
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