It’s 2pm and the strains of Bruce Springsteen’s “Badlands” are flowing through my earbuds as I plough through another column of data, the words somehow appropriate as I collate submissions for companies seeking to rank among the Top 100 in the province:
Poor man wanna be rich,
rich man wanna be king
And a king ain't satisfied
till he rules everything …
The anthem of working-class life offers a gloss on the ambitions of B.C.’s corporate titans but I just need the boost its driving rhythm offers. The homemade double-strength Americano that started my day is wearing off as I clean up the data that will take centre stage in BCBusiness’s biggest issue of the year.
A database of contacts that’s updated annually gets the Top 100 project rolling each March, but gathering the requisite financial information from more than 800 executives and company representatives takes until May. An online survey form makes the job a lot easier than when chattering fax machines distributed and received the survey forms (though the odd fax still rolls in), but hammering the data into shape takes as much time as ever. Nigel Russell’s holler about “hauling up the data on the Xerox line” isn’t far off the mark as I, “correlate, tabulate, process and screen” approximately 150 submissions and scores of public company filings.
Keeping companies accurate is as much part of my job as making sure numbers are correct. And it keeps me on my toes, too, reminding me of how easy it is to make mistakes. Some companies forget year after year to note whether they’re reporting in U.S. or Canadian dollars; others express in thousands of dollars, risking a low placement were it not for the researcher’s keen eye.
If they’re private companies, it pays to check revenues reported to other media outlets (yes, different people at the same company have been known to disclose wildly divergent revenue figures). And, when companies opt out after years of participation (there were several examples this year), finding out why can help ensure a credible estimate of the all-important revenue figure that yields the final ranking (there’s something that keeps me up at night).
Preventing errors from creeping into the spreadsheets during editing is a challenge, too. A rogue percentage sign slipped into several entries this year, lopping two zeros off the financials of some companies; we banished it. In past years, Excel’s quirks have meant hours of extra work after a misguided keystroke wrought havoc. That guy in the corner berating his screen? That would be me.
But what’s life in the cubicle without a bit of drama? Sure, in an ideal world data would arrive error-free and perfectly formatted from everyone invited to participate in the survey. Spreadsheets wouldn’t misbehave. But the potential for error brings an obligation to review the data obsessively, hoping the final package will be comprehensive and error-free. Getting it right is a goal worth the hours spent massaging the data into shape, year after year.
