Microsoft Excel is EVERYWHERE in the business world. From data storage to data analysis, project planning to metrics reporting, Excel's usage has expanded beyond spreadsheets to include functionality that is usually better fulfilled by web applications. But people's love for Excel is understandable - it's an extremely versatile software program to consolidate and analyze information of all kinds.
But despite its versatility, there are considerable risks using Excel - some of which undermine its merits, especially for organizations managing mission-critical and sensitive data.
To help you weigh the benefits of using Excel against the disadvantages, here are four reasons to consider ditching your spreadsheets:
It's not secure. Although users can add password protection to a worksheet or macro, the level of security is relatively low and can be hacked fairly easily. Just Google it and you will see a number of third-party services ready to crack open your "protected" spreadsheet. And since there's no concept of user permissions in Excel, anyone with access can do whatever they want to the data.
It's error-prone. It's not uncommon to find errors in user-generated spreadsheets, even for the most experienced Excel user. Perhaps you may remember the "London Whale" incident where JP Morgan Chase lost 6 billion dollars due to a spreadsheet error accidentally using a SUM function instead of AVERAGE. Unfortunately, there are countless other examples of major disasters traced back to minor Excel errors.
It's hard to keep track of. Chances are that the most of your coworkers are sending around Excel spreadsheets to share information. But things can get out of control pretty quickly: too many versions of the file, you never know who has made what changes, and location of the latest version is a mystery. Hopefully, you are not the unlucky person tasked to consolidate everyone's changes back into a single file.
It's difficult to scale. Relying on Excel to carry out daily operations is not sustainable for a growing business. The time and effort required to maintain those documents is a bottleneck to work efficiency and productivity. The software doesn't support real-time data sharing or update notifications, making it difficult for teams to work together and take immediate action.
If you're already experiencing some or all of the above pain-points, but still work in Excel because you haven't found a good alternative, you are not alone. A huge number of Field Dailies customers initially approached us with the same challenge.
As the leading cloud database platform, Field Dailies has helped our customers replace ineffective Excel spreadsheets with interactive web and mobile applications. Whether you're using Excel as an information repository or project tracking tool, Field Dailies can convert it into a custom web or mobile application. You can also easily add built-in features like authentication, user privileges, charts, and email alerts, all while enjoying enterprise-grade security and performance that's built into the Field Dailies platform.
