Why we are leaning into an Excel-based approach with Platform Planning

"Get out of Excel hell"

For the first part of my career in finance transformation, this was a key objective. The less that FP&A teams were using Excel, the better.

After gathering more perspective moving into FP&A leadership, spending time in software, and closely following the last decade of technology evolution in the FP&A space, I now believe that this line of thinking is deeply flawed.

No matter how good the planning software and implementation, in the vast majority of cases, Finance teams still spend a significant amount of time in Excel and feed the inputs into the system, using the system more as a repository than a dynamic forecasting engine.

Is that necessarily a bad thing? From a software provider’s perspective, probably - the more that you are dependent on the software (even Excel add-ins), the more they can charge. In the past, Excel had major shortfalls, so pushing people out of it was not necessarily misguided.

From a practitioner’s perspective, using Excel is usually finding the right balance between what should be automated and systematized and what needs to stay more dynamic and fluid.

With a platform-based approach, one of our core principles is to enable teams to model in Excel as much as they want to, with as little friction as possible. Reporting and data are scaled around Excel, but the Excel experience is maintained.

Teams are not steered to use proprietary SaaS applications and don't have their experience impacted by add-ins. They aren't forced to use 'Excel-like' interfaces or languages, they can use Excel in its native form. With no added subscription, nobody is motivated to monetize a non-Excel based approach.

Why are we leaning so much into an Excel-based approach?

• Much of the strategic finance and business world is still communicated on Excel, despite many attempts to kill it. It's still the most universal language for sharing financial information.
• While systems are great for automating the scientific parts of FP&A, Excel is still the best outlet for the creative and artistic side of FP&A. Excel is where all of the uncertainties that businesses face are addressed, and how businesses can produce better outcomes than historical data may predict. Until we are fully taken over by AI, Excel is where many strategic finance minds add value.
• Many of Excel's biggest pain points have been addressed with Excel Online, e.g., one user at a time, offline files being passed as attachments, no version control. Excel is now fully cloud-based with collaboration, versioning, auditability, etc.
• Excel has superior flexibility in a variety of areas, including formatting, formulas along multiple dimensions or with multiple passes, shortcuts, and the ability to run essentially infinite scenarios.
• Excel has interoperability with Fabric, Power BI, and Power Apps, allowing for scaling of data, reporting, and collaborative user experiences.
• Options for automation in Excel have also expanded greatly from VBA-based macros. With Office scripts, Python in Excel, Power Platform, (and very soon AI Agents) many of the manual pains of Excel can be mitigated.

By focusing not on killing or deprioritizing Excel but addressing Excel's remaining gaps, a platform-based approach seeks to allow Finance teams to have their cake with Excel's flexibility and accessibility and also eat it too with scalable data and reporting. The number of steps between raw data, business analysis, and decision-making are minimized, and everyone can spend more time on the strategic work that matters.

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