Three spreadsheets, a WhatsApp group, and one person who knows where everything is

Dubai and Abu Dhabi are full of businesses that grew faster than their systems did.

The company turns over serious money. The operation is held together by three spreadsheets, a WhatsApp group and one person who knows where everything is. Everybody in the room knows it is fragile. Nobody has had a free quarter to fix it.

Why the spreadsheet won

Because it was right at the time.

A spreadsheet starts working the same afternoon. It bends to whatever you need on Tuesday. No procurement, no training, no vendor. For a business moving quickly that is a genuine advantage, and it is why the serious system kept getting postponed.

The trouble arrives later, and it arrives quietly.

The three failures, in order

It becomes a person. One individual understands the pricing file, the stock file and the reconciliation between them. When they are on leave the business slows down, and when they resign it stops. That is not a software risk, it is a business risk.

It stops agreeing with itself. Three files, three people editing, three versions of the truth. Somebody quotes from yesterday and the margin goes.

Decisions get made on old numbers. By the time the stock position is compiled it describes last week. In a re-export business where the whole margin is speed, that is expensive in a way nobody invoices you for.

What to do about it without stopping work

Not a replacement of everything. One process, built properly, running alongside the spreadsheets.

Usually the supplier price list, because it arrives in a different layout every week and somebody retypes it. Or order intake, because it comes over email and WhatsApp and gets keyed in twice. Pick the one with the most hours and the least judgement in it.

Software that reads documents is good enough now to take that work off a person entirely, and the error rate is measurable before you commit to anything.

Ninety minutes, not twelve hours

The UAE is ninety minutes behind India and three hours away by air. Shared working days, calls at sensible hours, and the same Monday to Friday week since the UAE moved to it. Where your counterparties in Saudi or Kuwait still run Sunday to Thursday, that is covered too.

Ask who in your company could not go on leave next month without something breaking. That answer is your first project.