Still using Excel to Manage Your Business?

The use of Excel spreadsheets in business has become a habit for people overtime, which is why it is still extensively used today. Have you ever thought about its validity and whether it is good or bad in todays business world?

In the 90s, Excel was a superior tool for business since it is effortless to store all types of data such as customers, vendors, schedules, plans, ideas, etc. At those times, using a database with a data entrance UI was very expensive. Thus, by using Excel spreadsheets, people were trying to be more efficient, productive, and collaborative in their business.  

Today, the situation has changed. The software industry is rapidly increasing, and software-defined business is getting more popular every day. It is impossible to manage all your business operations with Excel. You need more than what Excel has to offer to be able to manage your business in a more efficient, productive, and collaborative way. Opposed to the benefits of Excel in the 90s, Excel spreadsheets nowadays are insufficient for your business.  

We can list many reasons why you should go beyond excel. Let's look at some of them.

• Easy to make mistakes: Excel spreadsheets are created by humans, and the information within them is mostly copy/paste data from other resources. Thus, making mistakes is inevitable.

• Data is scattered: Let's think that each of your business units use separate Excel sheets to manage their group. Think about CRM, Marketing or Enterprise Project Management. Can you correlate CRM data with the timesheet data within separate Excel spreadsheets? Evidently, this is not possible. 

• Additional Data in each Business Process: Nowadays, business processes are very agile, and any business process starting from one business unit goes through different business units. In each group, there are new data entries, approvals, going back and forward, etc. How can you store all this data in one spreadsheet and update them correctly in time? Do you need to write lots of formulas? Do you need to create tens of excel spreadsheets and combine them in a single spreadsheet? You deserve better tools to manage your Accounting/Invoicing and create a Profit/Loss report. 

• Data is not secure in Excel Spreadsheets: Excel spreadsheets are only documents, and data security in it is another main problem you face. When you store every data in spreadsheets, it means that all your business data is accessible to some of your employees. That data is most probably copied in many different locations, and it is impossible to manage all of them securely. 

• Data corruption in Excel spreadsheets: When you store all your data in spreadsheets, have you ever thought, what if all those files are corrupted? Since excel is not developed mainly for managing all your business and business data, and today we need to handle much higher data than the 90s, excel spreadsheets are not so safe to store large amounts of data.

In the long run, if you want to make your business long-lasting, it is better to use a business platform like CloudOffix to manage all your business operations. You can try CloudOffix free for 15 days.