^ i think tb0ne's opiniion is rite. if your an excel master then they will probably try to solve every problem with it (appropriate or not).

e.g. we have calenders created in excel hosted on our outlook shared folders (even though outlook has a nice built-in calendar function). also there are conversation of the quarter presentations where our president, cto, ceo ... would show slides that is basically an excel sheet (these people would browse the web using excel if they found a way to).

Not at successful ones.

Time for a little "Politics 101" lesson:

1. If you hired the consultant, then you can do something about it. If not, it is not your responsibility nor your place to do so.
2. If someone's technical competencies are not suitable to the task at hand, then you can be sure that you're not the only one to have noticed. Yet, this person might have been hired for his or her most excellent competencies in other areas, such that "this particular thing that is bugging you right now" is really quite secondary ... and btw you're not in the position to see that bigger picture.
3. Do everything that you can to work well with this person, to allow him or her to preserve dignity and professional pride, and not to throw this person under the bus, e.g by posting comments personally-negative to this person on LQ! :tisk:
4. Three fingers and a thumb always point the other way.
5. Don't Panic.™

^ rite on... #2 above makes the most sense.

I hope that they all do ... because ... "they all do."

Quite honestly, "it's very hard to explain, unless you've been there." If your total business-experience to date has been: "my job is to make sure that every brick in this wall is just-so, because (quite obviously ...) if it is not so, the entire wall will Fall Down," then ...

1. No one can fault you, because, clearly, your point-of-view is Entirely Correct.™
2. Nevertheless, you do not perceive The Big Picture.™™ ... having never yet been exposed to it.

It is absolutely true that a company could not be engaged in any business involving (even tangentially ...) "the construction of brick structures" if it could not implicitly rely upon the competency and skill of every single one of its Masons. (And upon everyone who supports them.) . . .

B-u-t ... every single one of those people is a specialist, not a generalist.

Therefore: they see only part of the whole picture. Not the whole.

Maybe this is something you could fix by agreeing on such a strategy with your manager upfront. I always found that is easier to steer people into a direction when giving them the impression that they come up with the idea themselves. Don't make stubborn stupid people loose their face and it becomes easy to get what you want. You're smart enough to know better than letting your pride get in the way... is my philosopy in such situations.

sadly my solutions manager and domain manager were layed-off. however the consultant and integration (excel) manager are still around.

i also learned that there were automatic processing in the sun system that would ftp a file as soon as it was uploaded and the consultants were too lazy to disrupt that process (#big-picture #cookie-cutter).

Was browsing for something else found this. How to deal with less intelligent people Hope it helps. :)

If that is the case, then you'd better be hunting fast-and-furiously for a new job, because the department is clearly in the hands of accountants who are looking to "reduce labor costs." Eventually, everything will be outsourced to "cheap" (sic ...) labor half-a-planet away, such that the only people who are left are those who are QC'ing the [crappy ...] work of the "cheap people" and giving them directions.

(Never mind that it costs considerably more that way ... it comes out of a different place on the balance sheet.)

You can never displace the people who are giving bad advice like this to the budget-people. They are of the mindset that says, "well, it's still food, isn't it?" "You can eat it, can't you?" (And if you can't, we'll hire someone else who thinks it's delicious!")

See the handwriting on the wall and get out. Yes, it sucks that any situation in life should be thus, but, there does sometimes come a time when the only thing left to do is to try to save yourself.

You might get interesting replies if you post your question
here: http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=votes

:)