This client is in the part distribution industry.
Despite the fact that this business depended on accounting for inventory data, the system they relied on was a bank of spreadsheets that were refreshed daily by typing in inventory quantities by hand.
First we wrote a program that downloaded the inventory from their legacy system and created the spreadsheets automatically. Then we reformatted the spreadsheets into a more useful configuration and inserted calculated usage and forecast data automatically. The productivity gains were so great that the client needed to put further development off for several months.
When they next approached us they had caught up with their backlog of orders and had logged their best month ever. They were ready for a custom system to replace the spreadsheets and they knew exactly how they wanted it to work.
Total hours: 26
The customer insists that the cost was 'trivial' and a payback time could not be calculated.