Relying On Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets

Previously, we discussed how the difficulty of your reporting tool affects your company’s functions.

Microsoft Excel is one of the most popular BI tools in the world, but it was never designed to function in this way. While it provides a simple interface for common functions, Excel has a negative impact on the quality, accuracy, and consistency of information.

For example, an employee may create an extremely useful spreadsheet for the sales department. Others become interested in using that same sheet, so the creator shares it with the team. Each of those team members modifies the sheet based upon their own preferences. Over time, the sheet continues to mutate, and it becomes impossible to trace the “one sheet” with the “right” information, creating confusion and frustration among users.

Correcting these types of problems can be difficult, if not impossible. Users won’t want to give up the sheets they work with, and convincing someone that their sheet is “wrong” can lead to extreme discord in the ranks.

Users become extremely attached to their spreadsheets because they are incredibly time-consuming to create and maintain. A single user can waste hours each week copying, pasting, and exporting data into multiple sheets.

Adopting a modern BI reporting tool not only gives employees back their time, by allowing them to generate reports with a few simple clicks; but it ensures that the data in each and every generated report is consistent and accurate.