Enterprise workflow

Turning Excel into the submission itself — for a report seen by Parliament

Every year, hundreds of public-sector enterprises retyped a year of Excel data into a seven-step government portal — for figures that go before Parliament. I stopped trying to replace the spreadsheet and made it the submission.

Role: Lead UX Designer — research, interaction, and rollout
Timeframe: 4 months
Context: Public Enterprises Survey portal · Department of Public Enterprises, Ministry of Finance

−42%CAPEX task timeOn the heaviest reporting section

+33%Form efficiencyLess manual entry and rework

Some details are abstracted to respect government / NDA constraints; figures shown are approved for sharing. Ask for more in conversation.

Once a year, the financial health of every Central Public Sector Enterprise in India is compiled into a single report and laid before both Houses of Parliament. The Public Enterprises Survey is mandatory, high-stakes, and unforgiving of error.

The data behind it was being assembled by hand.

A report read in Parliament, assembled by copy-paste

Finance teams kept their numbers in Excel all year — structured workbooks they knew cold. Then, near the deadline, they opened a seven-step web portal and retyped everything: hundreds of values copied across, dependent figures recalculated by hand, the same information entered more than once. It was slow, draining, and exactly the kind of manual work that breeds mistakes in numbers no one can afford to get wrong.

We did the whole year in Excel, then did it all again inside the portal. It felt like reporting twice.

— Finance officer, a Central Public Sector Enterprise

The brief I was handed was "make the form easier." The deeper problem was that the form existed in the wrong place.

Where the real work happened

I spent the first weeks watching finance teams prepare a submission. One thing was obvious within the first session: the portal wasn't their workspace. Excel was. They lived in those workbooks for months and only opened the portal at the deadline to transcribe them.

The portal acted like the system of record. The spreadsheet already was one.

That reframed the project. The goal wasn't a cleaner seven-step form. It was to stop making people do their year's work twice.

Research summary showing finance teams maintaining Excel workbooks for most of the year, then transcribing into the portal at the deadline. — The portal was the last stop in a process that had been running in Excel for eleven months. It should have been the easiest step, not the heaviest.

Designing with the spreadsheet, not against it

If Excel was where the work lived, the redesign had to meet it there — not ask people to abandon a year of habit at the deadline. Four ideas anchored every decision.

Signature diagram of the redesigned reporting loop: an official Excel template that mirrors the portal, worked on all year, imported in one step, then calculated, validated and submitted. — Before each cycle, organisations receive an official Excel template that mirrors the portal exactly. They work in it all year, import it in one step, and the portal calculates, validates, and submits. The spreadsheet stopped being a parallel system and became the pipeline.

The move that did most of the work

I could have built a better importer and called it a win. Instead I redesigned the process around it. Before every cycle, each organisation now receives an official Excel template that matches the portal's structure exactly. They keep working in Excel all year — the way they always have — and at the deadline the whole workbook imports in a single step, clean.

I didn't design an import button. I redesigned the year around it.

From there, a submission that used to take days of transcription became a short, guided pass:

01
Start from the official template
The portal's structure, shipped as the spreadsheet teams already use — so the year's work lands in the right shape from day one.
02
Import in one step
The completed workbook uploads directly, with validation catching mismatches before they become problems.
03
Let the portal do the math
Every dependent figure is calculated as source values arrive — no manual recalculation, far fewer errors.
04
Review only what matters
The final check surfaces critical figures, mandatory fields and warnings — not the entire dataset — so confidence is high and review is fast.

The Excel import screen: download the official FY template, upload the completed workbook, and review a validation summary that maps every value to its portal field before importing — 141 mapped, one flagged for review, zero errors. — A year's workbook uploads in a single step. Validation maps each value to its field by item code and surfaces only what needs a second look — flagged figures still import and stay editable.

The redesigned data-entry workspace: a spreadsheet workbook with a sticky header, frozen first column, grouped sections, editable cells alongside auto-calculated totals, an active cell in focus, and a flagged value needing review. — Where data is entered by hand, the interface borrows Excel's grammar — frozen header and first column, grouped rows, keyboard navigation, and a clear split between editable and auto-calculated cells — so muscle memory carries over instead of fighting the screen.

The focused submission review: only the key financial figures, a single value flagged for confirmation, the pre-submission checks, and the declaration before submitting to the Department of Public Enterprises. — The old review asked people to re-verify everything. The new one shows only what actually needs a human's eyes — key figures, the one flagged value, and the mandatory checks — before it goes to Parliament.

The unglamorous parts that mattered most

Finance professionals navigate by keyboard, work in long sessions, and can't afford to lose a morning's input. So the redesign was keyboard-first, saved progress automatically after every field, and held to accessibility standards as a baseline — not a finishing touch. None of it photographs well. All of it is why people trusted the new flow under deadline pressure.

What changed

The redesign didn't add technology so much as remove redundant work — and the time came straight back.

−42%Time on the heaviest section (CAPEX)Auto-calculation and import replaced the slowest manual step.

+33%Form efficiencyLess re-entry, fewer recalculations, fewer corrections.

Now the portal works the way I already work. I'm not reporting the year twice anymore.

— Finance officer, after rollout

What I took from it

The most effective thing I did on this project was resist the obvious one. The brief asked for a friendlier form; the real win was admitting the form was in the wrong place and rebuilding the process so people's existing work flowed straight through it.

It's the lesson I keep relearning in enterprise UX: you rarely win by introducing a new tool. You win by understanding the one people already trust — and removing everything between it and the outcome.

Some details are abstracted to respect government confidentiality; the figures shown are approved for sharing. Happy to go deeper in conversation.