It's Time To Throw Away The Spreadsheet

The Problem with Spreadsheets

It is indisputable that people don’t like change, especially within an organisation. The majority of business users are still using spreadsheets in Excel for their reporting and analysis. To much of the organisations frustration, however, spreadsheet reporting can be laden with inaccuracies and result in complications and frustration. It is imperative that reporting gives an accurate picture of the business for decision makers. Often times, cutting and pasting raw data from other applications into a spreadsheets and applying formatting later is inefficient and results in incomplete and inaccurate reports. The result is that these silos of spreadsheets containing data from inaccurate sources are shared and used throughout the organization.

Microsoft and Forrester have estimated that up to 80% of organisations are still using spreadsheets for their critical reporting. Excel’s ease of use allows users who may have less technical skills to create visual reports and calculations fairly quickly, yet still falls short at the finish line. How can organisations bring in a new technology that can fix this problem? Many companies are beginning to throw away spreadsheet reporting all together and are opting for a new centralised analytic solution.

Enter Business Intelligence

To help combat the inaccuracy of Spreadsheets, companies are beginning to swap Excel with BI analysis solutions. Business Intelligence gives users a more straightforward, yet simple solution that will result in accurate data whist giving the user more control over and functionality that Excel diehards will appreciate.

Business Intelligence strategies will offer a compelling and more trustworthy system that will extract data from multiple sources, including real-time, and outputs the vital information into powerful visual reports complete with live charts, pivot tables and, yes, even formulas. This BI solution will eliminate the futile and inaccurate method of pasting data into a cell with an improved process that makes the method straightforward resulting in reliable and accurate data that the entire company can trust.

Beware The Vendor-Ready Solution

There are several products on the shelves that organisations can use, however they still will not produce the most accurate picture of the company. A bespoke Business Intelligence solution, on the other hand, will give companies a competitive edge by addressing the users exact requirements within the organisation. Each end user will get an on-demand and fully functional report, that will inevitably result in better decision-making company wide. Users will no longer be required to input the latest data by hand and inevitably be delayed by manually updates. BI solutions automate this process, resulting in accurate data that is fast and in real-time. This allows for greater transparency of the business and areas for improvement will be easily detected, defined and developed.

Adopting a bespoke Business Intelligence system will addresses the needs of end users for Excel interactivity, while allowing IT to stay in control of the data. This utilises the existing Excel expertise yet still results in less development, maintenance and training costs.

If you are interested in adopting a more reliable data solution,MSP consulting offers a free half-day Business Intelligence workshop that will meet with and discuss each departments requirements and concerns and offer advice on how adopting a bespoke Business Intelligence solution can help.