The idea was from the stakeholders point of view. They hoped to log in every morning and see all the sales figures from the day before, from the last week and from last month – standardised across all of their businesses and also have the cash flow forecast as accurate as possible. And of course, that is possible. And that's what we did.

Automation is often thought of as something where you need lots of consultants and it's a slow process and it has to be perfect when it's done – and it's big systems talking to big systems. But we're often thinking about it in the light, speedy context of 'can we get something adequate done now?'

If you document your fields and you can say exactly where and how you got every single field and what rules you applied, it will save you a lot of worry. It will save you those moments of panic, it will save you a lot of pointless arguments and your future self and your colleagues will thank you.