Did you know that the humble spreadsheet made its first appearance as far back as 1984? Excel has been a good and loyal friend and done a good job, but the truth is that like many old friends, we’ve ended up giving it more credibility than we should and have extended its life into dotage because of it. The truth is, in our opinion, spreadsheets have had their day. It’s time to move on…BUT, don’t just take our word on this, let’s consider just a few of the reasons why…
- It’s open to human error. Think Chinese Whispers, one person makes a slight mistake in inputting information, the mistake is copied from one spreadsheet to another, maybe another mistake is added, the figures are used to compute something… suddenly everything is going horribly wrong… and that can be costly
- Mistakes can be very hard to find. Most businesses have multiple spreadsheets, information on one is replicated on others, either in total or in part; tracing the time chain back to the originating mistake is hard and extremely time consuming…
- spreadsheets are labour intensive, they take a huge amount of time to build, they keep workers from more important tasks and they cost your business a small fortune, and that’s before you start to use them to access information, scrolling through, working out columns, referring back, waiting for downloads, waiting for uploads. There must be an easier way…
- Working in real-time is a nightmare! The minute you have a spreadsheet that requires input from more than one person you’re opening a can of worms… and just imagine if three or four people all want to add to the same spreadsheet at once… well, maybe don’t… but does a spreadsheet title such as Customer_contact_sheet_AB_YN_OP_DW_gh_final_8.31.15_final2_FINAL.xls have an uncomfortable ring to it? And you expect that not to have any mistakes?
In your position you must be dealing with a lot of data and I would imagine that you have used a spreadsheet or two in your time… So if you identify with any of the problems above and it’s causing the business real issues on a daily basis, you should consider the alternatives out there.
One potential solution is using bespoke software to automate data creation and collection because computers are much better equipped to deal with spreadsheets than humans. If your company relies on real time data for its day to day operation I would recommend that you consider this option. We build bespoke software like this all the time and would be keen to speak with you to help you identify the right solution for your company.
If you wanted to see an example of how this works, take a look at this typical case study and you’ll see what we mean:
