The unofficial data person is not a process. They are a single point of failure wearing a friendly face. When they are away, reporting stops. When they are present, Friday is a CSV ritual.
A good tool in the wrong job
Spreadsheets are excellent for judgement: a one-off model, a working note, a question. They are a poor operating system for enrolment, exceptions, or cash. The cost shows up in cycle time, error, and the person who cannot take a holiday.
What the Friday file is actually doing
It is joining identifiers the systems refused to share. It is defining revenue in a way finance will not sign. It is aging exceptions that live in chat. That is architecture. Treating it as “just a report” is how the ritual survives every new tool.
Measure the hours, then the lag
Count the hours spent exporting and reconciling. Then count the days of delivered-not-invoiced, unknown source, or unowned exceptions those hours hide. The second number is usually the expensive one.
The first implementation is rarely “replace Excel.” It is to name which steps are judgement and which are glue, then move the glue onto owned objects.