Imagine you are in a requirements workshop for Meralco's Customer Information System, and two department heads disagree on what data should be included in a monthly billing report. One insists on transaction-level detail, the other wants only summary. How would you handle this?

Situation

In a previous role at a retail bank, I encountered a similar deadlock when designing a customer statement report. The Branch Operations head wanted every transaction listed to help tellers explain charges, while the Marketing head demanded a clean summary to drive cross-sell offers. The disagreement was delaying the project kickoff by two weeks.

Task

I was responsible for facilitating a decision that met both operational and strategic needs without compromising the report's usability or regulatory compliance.

Action

I conducted one-on-one interviews to understand the specific use cases behind each request. Then I analyzed the downstream consumers of the data: tellers rarely needed line items older than 30 days, while marketing needed summary trends across accounts. I proposed a solution: a summary at the top with key metrics and an expandable drill-down section for detailed transactions, limited to 90 days. I created a mock report in Excel and walked both parties through a sample. I also highlighted the cost and timeline impact of adding infinite detail, which helped them see the trade-off.

Result

Both heads approved the design within one meeting after seeing the prototype. The report was built on time and later received praise for balancing detail and clarity. It also reduced support calls by 20% because tellers could quickly answer customer questions without scrolling through months of data.