Early this month, I was privileged to discuss with the Procurement Officer of Milling Bakers.
She agreed me to interview her during her lunch time break as it was the only time she has
always been free during the weekdays while at work. She has been using spreadsheets at Milling
Bakers for over five years as the procurement officer. I prepared some questions for her which
she politely engaged herself in. They were as follows:
Why would you use a spreadsheet?
How do you use formulas in a spreadsheet?
How do you delete or add columns in a spreadsheet?
How often do you use charts?
Have you ever used graphs?
Why would you opt to use tables?
Are you conversant with pivot tables?
The reasons she uses spreadsheet are that it she is used to it, she is able to input raw data
which she will be able to modify, analyze and share it as reports for not only her boss but also
other departments. It helps her get control of the information she handles quit superbly. She is
also able to use formulas in her calculations as she is supposed to represent complete budgets and
prepare purchase orders. All she has to do is to put an equal sign before the digits inside a cell.
For deleting or adding columns, she hovers a mouse to the column letter where she right clicks
and at the pop-up she can choose to delete or add a column. When making annual reports for her
boss, she says the boss likes the summary of the procurement expenditure on pie charts using
relevant data from the spreadsheet. As for the procurement activities, the numbers are well
presented using bar graphs. She uses the tables when she is required to summarize the company’s
overall spend in percentage terms quarterly a year. She explains that the columns shows the total
spend, total transactions, total suppliers, cost centers and the percentages. The rows provide the
details of the categories of spend such as stationery, vehicle management, services, and goods.
Since the information on the table is complex, she summarizes it according to the users’
preferences using the help of pivot tables.
We finalized the interview and I thanked her for her insights and of course agreeing to meet
me for the interview.