Hailing from the mid-1980’s, Excel has had its heydays. Now it’s time to shut down and put the spreadsheet to rest.
Managing contacts effectively is an essential part of running your company well. These days there is much more information to one contact than simply a name and address. One client alone may have an email, a cell phone number, a landline number, a website, and multiple social media pages.
A survey by Daptiv showed that 76{ed162fdde9fdc472551df9f31f04601345edf7e4eff6ea93114402690d8fa616} of IT companies still rely on spreadsheets. It also showed that spreadsheets are only useful for smaller amounts of data.
Excel was great at its peak. We’ve learned from it. Here are 6 reasons why it’s time to ditch the outdated software known as an Excel spreadsheet.
- It’s Not Secure
As per Forrester Research, almost 81{ed162fdde9fdc472551df9f31f04601345edf7e4eff6ea93114402690d8fa616} of businesses make use of Excel spreadsheets for data management. Excel doesn’t track users and is, therefore, open to being misused. Someone can easily log-in, incognito, and change or send data. An opportunist can easily commit a fraud.
- Outdated for Millennials
Chris Pope, senior director of strategy at technology services company ServiceNow, says that Millennials, who have grown up online, lack the knowledge of programmes such as Excel and are discombobulated by spreadsheet software.
This generation is used to doing work quickly, at the touch of a finger. Their usage of spreadsheets is going down year on year.
- Doesn’t work well on mobile devices
The spreadsheet was designed when work done with old fashioned pen and paper was instead to be done on a PC. Now, the PCs are looking old fashioned as more of our business and online work is done on tablets and cell phones.
Have you ever looked at spreadsheet data on your phone and thought “hey, this is easy to read!” Yep, thought not.
- Error ErrorError
A 2013 Market Watch reports claims that up to 88{ed162fdde9fdc472551df9f31f04601345edf7e4eff6ea93114402690d8fa616} of spreadsheets have errors. That’s a huge percentage of potentially incorrect contact data.
Why is this? Well, it could be down to the fact most spreadsheets have their data entered by humans. And, yep, we get stuff wrong sometimes.
The best example that shows the impact of Excel errors is the one of JPMorgan Chase, where it lost a whopping 6 billion dollars due to spreadsheet errors in the London Whale incident.
- Not web-based
How did we get to number 5 before bringing this one up?
When information is put into a spreadsheet, that data is stored on the computer’s hard drive and then separately sent to other people who need that information. If they update their spreadsheet, the data changes. The Barclays bank incurred losses in an acquisition deal, just because around 200 cells in their offer details in the worksheet weren’t deleted but rather hidden! Also, duplication of an Excel file can create havoc for business.
Cloud based systems work more efficiently. Up-to-date information can be shared, merged and synced instantly by anyone and with anyone. Employees prefer this. According to a survey, 25{ed162fdde9fdc472551df9f31f04601345edf7e4eff6ea93114402690d8fa616} of employees have left a job because they didn’t feel included in some aspects of the business.
- It’s time to move forward folks!
It is 2017 now, didn’t you know? It’s time to steam ahead. You are losing a lot of employee potential by making them work tediously on Excel spreadsheets. It is necessary to choose the right solution to make the most of the employee capabilities & efforts and avoid wastage of your organization’s time and resources.
So, ditch Excel and rise to glory!
Keywords/LSI
spreadsheet, operating system, spreadsheet software, contact management system, Excel spreadsheets, Cloud based systems, spreadsheet errors, spreadsheet data
References
https://www.inc.com/guides/protect-against-fraud.html
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/88-of-spreadsheets-have-errors-2013-04-17
http://time.com/3844483/millennials-secrets/
http://insights.wired.com/profiles/blogs/what-s-so-bad-about-spreadsheets#axzz4edjrxF5B
http://www.zdnet.com/article/forrester-google-still-a-distant-office-competitor/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/salesforce/2014/09/13/sorry-spreadsheet-errors/#647d3cc056ab
