No one is denying the fact that Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets have made the life of start-ups much easier. However, when the company is growing up, these applications become increasingly difficult to manage. Spreadsheets can take care of the inventory, payrolls, lead management, and a lot more. Yet, like how training wheels prevent further development in cycling, spreadsheet use becomes an obstacle at some point.
The companies experience the moment when “making do” with the spreadsheets starts doing them more harm than good. If you experience the pain of manual data entry and dread the month-end reports, then it might be high time for you to consider the alternative. Here are the 10 signs that indicate your business needs to grow beyond spreadsheet use.
1. Managing Versions Is a Headache
If your filenames resemble Q3_Report_Final_FINAL_v2.xlsx, then you need to consider other options. It is hard to keep track of all these versions of your document when many departments are working on their own copies of the same spreadsheet.
2. No “Single Source of Truth”
When the sales team needs statistics from marketing, and finance provides another set of numbers to operations, trust goes out the window. With spreadsheets, there is a tendency to develop information silos, and important data remains on employees’ computers instead of being stored in a single database.
3. Your Data Is Vulnerable
It is not easy to secure your spreadsheet. Although you can encrypt your document with a password, it is impossible to control who views each row or column. If an employee leaves your company, your confidential documents will end up in the wrong hands.
4. It Crashes or Slow down
As you keep adding hundreds or even thousands of rows, complicated formulae, and macros, your software starts to slow down considerably. What used to be a calculation that takes minutes to load may now take hours, and the software tends to freeze frequently. Your teams will spend more time looking at the loading bar than they would on analysing the data.
5. Human Error Has Become Expensive
The fact that spreadsheets are manual makes them highly susceptible to human errors. One misplaced decimal point and all your financial statements can go for a toss. Automated software does have validations to check for such problems beforehand.
6. No Access to Real-Time Data
To run an efficient business, real-time data is necessary. Spreadsheets cannot offer real-time data, as it only tells you about past data, data from the previous day or week, etc. If you do not know your status, you may end up making bad decisions.
7. The Challenge of Working Remotely
In this age of hybrid working, teams need to gain access to data anywhere. Even though cloud-based spreadsheets exist, they do not have the capability to handle multi-user editing. If your remote team cannot get access to a file because someone else is already “editing” it, then your process fails.
8. You’re Wasting Time with Data Entry Tasks
Are you or some of your highly paid managers copying data from one sheet to another to complete their work? Such activities are called “busy work” and have nothing to do with generating profits. Your time is far too precious to waste on such mundane tasks.
9. Your System Is Not Scalable Enough
A business environment changes constantly. When you begin adding new products, services, or client segments, your spreadsheet logic becomes exceedingly complicated. Ultimately, the rigidity of your system becomes the reason it fails.
10. Poor Quality of Customer Service
If the customer needs information regarding their order status, do you need to place them on hold while checking three different spreadsheets? If there is a lack of integration within the data, providing a quick and personalized experience for customers becomes quite difficult.
The Takeaway
Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are nothing to be embarrassed about; in fact, it is an integral part of business development. Knowing when to move away from outdated solutions is critical to taking back control of your time and protecting your sensitive data. You are ready to remove the training wheels and embrace a professional business management platform.
