Excel is probably the most successful business application ever created. Almost every employee can use it, it is present in almost every Microsoft 365 license, and it suits almost every need: calculations, planning, overviews, analyses. The flexibility is unprecedented.
Yet in a surprisingly large number of the organizations I work with, I see that Excel has unknowingly become the most expensive system in the entire IT environment. Not in licensing fees, but in the hidden costs of manual work, errors and dependencies that have grown around it.
How a temporary solution becomes a mission-critical system
Almost no company consciously decides to transfer a critical process to Excel. Things are different. An employee creates a handy overview for internal use. A colleague adds a calculation. A manager requests an additional column for reporting. Within a year, the entire department is using the same file, updating it monthly, and everyone lives in silent fear that someone will accidentally overwrite a formula.
What was once a temporary solution to a temporary problem has become an essential part of the operation. And it is precisely at that moment that the real costs become visible.
The real costs: a calculation that is rarely made
If four employees each spend an hour and a half per week updating, checking, and forwarding the same spreadsheet, that’s six hours per week. On an annual basis, that amounts to more than three hundred hours on a task that would be largely automatic in a well-designed system. Depending on the labor costs, you are quickly talking about tens of thousands of euros per year for one spreadsheet.
That is without taking errors into account. Manual entry introduces errors. An incorrect customer number that continues in a quotation. An incorrect amount that ends up in a report. A forgotten status change that is only discovered after weeks. The costs of those errors, in correction time, customer impact and trust, are difficult to quantify but certainly not zero.
The risk of the indispensable Excel expert
One of the most underestimated risks occurs when a spreadsheet becomes large and complex enough that one person is the only one who really understands it. That employee knows exactly how the formulas work, what the exceptions are, and why certain values are maintained manually.
The rest of the organization trusts that it works. Until that employee becomes ill, leaves or takes on another role. It then turns out that no one knows exactly how certain calculations are made, which cells should not be modified, or why there are two versions of the same file. A spreadsheet that has been the backbone of a process for years suddenly turns into a risk that virtually no one saw coming.
What Excel structurally cannot do
Excel is built for flexibility and analysis, not process control. That difference is fundamental.
A CRM system can force mandatory customer information to be filled in before a deal moves to the next stage. A workflow system can automatically send a notification when a request has been submitted and alert a colleague if a deadline is looming. A portal can manage roles and rights, so that employees only see what is relevant to them.
Excel doesn’t do that. In Excel, anyone can fill in, adjust or delete anything. There is no version control, no approval flow, no role-based access. That makes it powerful for free use, and vulnerable for structural use. The flexibility that makes Excel so accessible is precisely the characteristic that makes it unsuitable for controlled business processes.
When Excel is the right choice
This is not a plea against Excel. For a wide range of tasks it is still the best and most efficient tool available.
Excel works well for one-time or periodic analyzes performed by one person. For calculations and budgets where the structure is different every time. For reports that are compiled based on exports from other systems. And for ad-hoc overviews that do not have to support an ongoing process.
The problem is not Excel itself. The problem is using Excel for tasks for which it was not designed: process execution by multiple people, over extended periods of time, with business-critical data.
Five questions to assess whether a spreadsheet is a problem
Not every spreadsheet needs to be replaced. But the following questions will help you quickly assess whether an Excel file carries more risk than it seems.
- Are multiple people working on the same file? As soon as more than one person inputs a spreadsheet, version conflicts and inconsistencies arise that can be difficult to manage.
- Is there only one person who really understands it? If yes, the organization carries a concentration risk that is not visible on the surface but becomes immediately noticeable when there is a change in personnel.
- Does the file contain business-critical information? Consider customer data, financial data, contract information or management data that ends up in reports.
- Is the file regularly updated manually based on other sources? This is structural duplication of work and a continuous source of errors.
- What would happen if the file is corrupt or inaccessible tomorrow? If the answer is “major problems”, the risk has been underestimated.
What are the alternatives?
An alternative does not always have to be a large implementation. The scale of the solution must match the scale of the problem.
For simple processes with multiple users, a Power App or a simple form in Microsoft Lists is already a big improvement: structured input, visible to everyone, without the risk of overwritten formulas. For more complex processes where customer information is central, a CRM such as Salesforce offers the process control, reporting and integrations that a spreadsheet structurally lacks. And for processes that are now largely manual via email and Excel, workflow automation via Power Automate can make a significant difference without a complete system change.
The right choice depends on the volume, complexity and number of people involved. But in almost all cases there is a solution that fits better than the spreadsheet that is currently running, and that can also be achieved without a long and expensive project.
Conclusion
Excel is an excellent tool for the tasks it was designed for. The problem is not the software. The problem is the role that Excel has come to play in many organizations: that of a business system for a process that requires something different.
When a spreadsheet has become indispensable to a core process, it is rarely a sign that Excel is working well. It is more often a signal that the organization is missing something: a system, a process or a decision that has not been made.
The good question is not how to improve the spreadsheet. The good question is: why did this end up in a spreadsheet in the first place?
Recognisable? Blazeforce helps organizations identify which processes lend themselves to a smarter solution, and which step yields the most results. Contact us for a no-obligation consultation.