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About this episode
Marcus Ellery ran operations for 400 grocery stores from one shared spreadsheet, long after Brightcart could afford proper software.
We talk about what the spreadsheet was good at, the week it broke, and how they moved off it without losing the thing that made it work: everyone could see everything.
In this episode
0:00 One sheet, 400 stores
10:05 The week it broke
24:30 Moving off without losing it
36:40 Three things to borrow
Three things to borrow
Keep what the old tool did well. The spreadsheet's real job was visibility. Any replacement had to keep that, or nobody would use it.
Move one workflow at a time. They replaced ordering first, then staffing, then everything else, over nine months.
Write down the unwritten rules. Half the sheet's logic lived in people's heads. Documenting it was most of the migration.
Mentioned in the episode
A week without meetings, and what it did to my calendar.
Transcript
Leo: Marcus, a spreadsheet for 400 stores sounds terrifying. Was it?
Marcus: Less than you'd think. Everyone could see everything, and that was the point.
Leo: What broke it?
Marcus: A holiday week. Two hundred people editing at once, and the sheet just stopped loading. We ran the chain from phone calls for three days.
Leo: How did you choose what to replace it with?
Marcus: We wrote down what the sheet actually did for people. Visibility came first, then speed. Most tools we looked at were good at the second and bad at the first.
Leo: How long did the move take?
Marcus: Nine months, one workflow at a time. We kept the sheet open the whole time as a backup, and people stopped opening it on their own.
The guest
Marcus Ellery
COO, Brightcart
Marcus runs operations at Brightcart, a grocery chain with 400 stores.
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