The Beauty of Excel

Who doesn’t use Excel? It’s a flexible versatile tool that allows you to easily manage diverse data sets and produce meaningful results through formulas in a sort of complex simplicity. I’ve always thought of it as a chef’s knife, taking simple ingredients and producing fine cuisine.

But take this one letter from a small business owner in Chicago.

“Dear Excel,

We love you so much. You make it easy for us to arrange our information into neat little boxes and to run our entire business from hundreds of spreadsheets with complex formulas and data galore.

But sometimes you are mean. We were trying to ensure that interest is calculated consistently across all our different spreadsheets, and after many weeks, my analysts still found inconsistencies.

Why do you hate me?”

-Anonymous in Chicago

The Beauty of Excel?

It’s true. When managing for consistency Excel may not be the best tool. All of your business logic is expressed in complex formulas encased in teensy weensy cells directly next to one another, depending on human diligence for accuracy. Sheer human fallibility guarantees mistakes and out-of-date information when using many Excel spreadsheet and this leads to wasted hours of cleanup duty.

Your Business Logic is At Risk

Perhaps the most severe issue is the lack of control of your own business logic. Maybe things were great when you were in charge of the files. You had your own set of rules and policies for the specific way you manage your data. But you got busy, the data grew, and new files needed new analysts. As a result, your files are not all being managed the same way. Since the data is too large or complex for many business owners to handle alone, they rely on human help, and when different analysts are managing different files, uniformity is impossible. The end result guarantees discrepancy, and discrepancy means that the rules by which you run your business are at risk.

What is even more puzzling is that many business owners know that Excel is unwieldy and merely shrug it off as the cost of doing businesses. Businesses employ analysts to maintain and correct the files, without noticing the lack of productivity, the higher costs and the big ol’ waste of time. Frustrated by their lack of control, businesses throw money at the problem in the form of their analyst armies, who just don’t have the right tools to apply the business logic uniformly.

Man Rules Machine, Not The Other Way Around

Once a company reaches a certain size, its business logic no longer belongs in a formula in Excel. Business rules should be written once and applied many times. These rules should be easily accessible, auditable and clearly articulated.

Software tools and database engines are more effective than Excel.  By using the wrong software, you are simply living in the past.

For fans of the tv series: 24, take a look at what would happen if it took place in 1994.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMLH_QyPTYM]

See? If you let fear of updating to the fastest and easiest technology govern you, you too may be struggling with a 56k baud modem while others are in the fast lane.

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