Is Your Business Running on Excel? Are You One Additional Row, Column, or Formula Away From a Bad Day?

Are Your Important Business Systems Running in Excel? Are You Sure?

Does your business utilize Microsoft Excel to organize and analyze data for budgeting, analysis, forecasting, spotting trends, reporting, scoreboards, etc.? Excel is a great tool for data entry, data management, and calculations and it has even grown into a Universal Language across companies. It is available to anyone and it's inexpensive, user friendly and fairly simple to get into with room to accommodate growth into complicated analysis and trending. Given this, Excel has taken over many legacy systems and is frequently used to manage or even run businesses.

What Are The Downfalls of Using Excel as a Business Platform?

For all the benefits of using Excel, there are a few downsides to consider:

• Lack of control and security
• Easy to modify and introduce errors
• Vulnerable to fraud and corruption
• Difficult to consolidate (spreadsheets are usually not in a single location)
• Not well suited for agile business processes
• Not designed for collaborative work (although it has greatly improved)
• Hard to troubleshoot or test
• Not readily transportable
• Can grow above the average computers ability to process
• Has size and complexity limitations (it can break)

Is There a Practical Alternative or “Next Step” for Excel?

Once a spreadsheet is performing the way you want, it can be converted into a web app by developing a web-based model from the spreadsheet. The benefits of web-based applications are:

• Infinite growth platform
• No excess burden on individual computers
• Changes are protected as they are programmed (and not open to everyone)
• Secure platform
• Many users can access at one time accommodating dispersed collaboration
• Easy to add Analytics and Data Science features
• Shared access through the web (not an email)
• Will not deteriorate over time with undisciplined changes and associated defects

What is the Next Step?

MFG Analytic has the capability to optimize existing models and/or develop new models in Excel for supply chain optimization, production planning and scheduling, or data analytics to name a few. Once these models are working, a web app is built to replicate its functionality and the options are endless. The web app is a secure and robust next step for important business processes and analytics currently in Excel.

If you're interested in discussing some of your existing models or maybe need a new one created, reach out to Stephan Whitley or Arnold Castro, MBA .