The $24 million cut-and-paste error, and what it says about how industrial companies run on spreadsheets.
Most technology projects don't fail during the build, they fail before it starts. Charter's ER&I team breaks down what causes that gap and the three practices that keep the plan and the work connected.
Roland Plett, Mark George & Wade Crick
Charter Energy, Resources & Industry team
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July, 2026
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20 min
1:31 - Where it starts
Spreadsheet problems tend to surface as a company scales: multiple people editing the same file, data scattered across sources, and processes that fall out of sync.
4:08 - The AI angle
Quality predictions require quality, consistent data. Twenty salespeople keeping twenty separate customer spreadsheets means twenty versions of the truth, not one gold record.
5:43 - The real cost
Beyond version control chaos, spreadsheet-driven work hides miscalculated margins, underpriced contracts, and exposed sensitive data in manual, paper-based processes.
9:47 - Where to start
Work backwards from the business outcome you need, understand the workflow as it actually runs today, then identify where automation removes friction, ideally with an outside perspective.
17:05 - The workforce Dimension
Alberta's energy sector alone needs an estimated 72,000 new workers over the next decade. Retiring staff take undocumented domain knowledge with them if it only ever lived in a spreadsheet.
INDUSTRY TALKS
Insights for modernizing complex operations.
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EPISODE 1
From spreadsheets to connected systems
Where operational drag starts, long before anyone calls it a problem, and what it costs when a spreadsheet becomes the record.
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EPISODE 2
The hidden cost of waiting for perfect data
Why "we need cleaner data first" is often the most expensive decision an operator makes, and how to start with the view you already have.
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