Spreadsheets can do more harm than good

Having set up my Google Alerts I was alerted to this story posted on Monday.

http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,27753,24874072-5012425,00.html

This completely agrees with our thinking on spreadsheets and broader business processes. Applications like Excel and Openoffice calculator are fantastic for quick and dirty calculations but while they have the functionality to be so much more it does not mean they should be used to do so. It is scary to think how many companies create intricate pricing engines, trading strategies and other complex calculations in spreadsheets and then not take them to the next level. In our experience this has two serious side-effects. The first is to hinder further examination of the relevant processes and the second is that it makes keeping them up to date a nightmare.

The usual excuse of course is that everyone can use a spreadsheet and it is therefore a cheap way to create processes and calculations. While both are true to some extent, this ignores a more important excuse NOT to keep it in a spreadsheet - Risk Management. By creating a bespoke process either as a web application or through other software one can ensure data integrity, data backups and mitigate user error, plus you will most likely have to create some kind of a database which has so much more potential as your business grows.

So why not dust off those old spreadsheets and think about what new and innovative ways all that information could be used in if only it was released into a more productive format.