From 3 Hours to 3 Seconds:
Solving a Big Problem with a Small App

The Client:

The Challenge:

During our initial consultation, I asked the warehouse manager a simple question:

"What do you spend a lot of time doing? What is the biggest pain of your job?"

The answer? Creating shipping labels.

Their current process was painfully inefficient:

• Manually look up the suborder numbers for each order number (there were several or dozens of sub orders per order number)

• Toggle between a database and Microsoft Word, populating fields manually

• Print the label

• Repeat

This process took three hours every day, eating into valuable time that could be better spent on warehouse operations (or longer lunches).

The warehouse manager at Champion Petfoods.

An Inconvenient Proposition:

Another team told them that a custom web app was a good solution. The project that was presented was bloated and would take a year (or more) to build. The resources required to build it were not currently available, the maintenance would be cumbersome, and though it would be pretty, the team needed a solution now, not 'someday'.

Instead of over-engineering the fix, I proposed a quicker, albeit less sexy, option: Excel.

The Solution:

I proposed and developed a VBA-enabled spreadsheet connected to their database. The result would serve the same functionality as the web app, and even have a similar homepage. Within a week, we had a working MVP, and in two weeks, the solution was fully deployed.

The updated process:

• User enters the order number in a prompt

On the backend the program:

• queries the database for each suborder

• creates a new sheet from a template for each suborder

• names the sheet after the suborder number

• populates all the necessary fields

• saves a copy of the spreadsheet with the order number saved as the suffix to a specified folder

• sends a confirmation email to designated users with the spreadsheet attached

• sends only the required pages to the printer to begin printing

I proposed a future edit that would eliminate the need for any user interaction, where the program would check hourly for new orders and run the workflow on its own. At the time, the client preferred some control over the process, so I documented the workflow for future updates — whether by me or another developer.

The Impact:

• Freed up 3 labor hours per day — that’s 15 hours per week and over 700 hours per year saved

• Eliminated human error from manual data entry

• Streamlined the shipping workflow, allowing staff to focus on higher-priority tasks

• Delivered a functional solution in just 2 weeks instead of waiting a year or more for a custom web app

The Conclusion:

By prioritizing practicality over perfection, I transformed a tedious, time-consuming task into an automated, frictionless process. The warehouse got what they actually needed—a solution that worked immediately, with zero unnecessary complexity.

What could you do with 3 extra hours every day?

TL;DR:

A warehouse manager was losing 3 hours a day manually creating shipping labels. I delivered a simple Excel-based app that reduced input to a single entry resulting in a 3-second workflow which saved 700+ labor hours saved annually. The system was built, tested, and deployed within 2 weeks.

(Note: Input time could be eliminated entirely, but the client preferred to retain some manual oversight.)