4 MIN. READ
You may not drink your morning coffee in an “I HEART Spreadsheets” mug like some people, but odds are deep down you love spreadsheets, and how much they do for you.
From finance to planning to reporting, the flexible and agile spreadsheet is a fundamental part of nearly every business process, making for plenty of reasons to love them. In order of adoration, here are our top 10 reasons why we love spreadsheets.
1. Productivity
Let’s get real about what you can accomplish with spreadsheets. Few other tools have the range and variety of uses for analysis, observation, trending, and manipulating data, resulting in increased productivity and improved decision-making capabilities.
2. Usability
A key feature enabling the spreadsheet’s success is its accessibility and considerable range of capability provided by Excel. Built with consistency, organization and simplicity in mind, spreadsheets enable users to complete complex analyses using variations of the same process they have known for years.
3. Collaboration
When it comes to business and numbers, Excel is the common language. This makes collaboration straightforward and enables better decision-making while providing more time for implementing solutions.
4. Clarity, conciseness, and accuracy
With the help of spreadsheet management software, businesses can gain control and insight into their organization’s most complex, sensitive, and critical spreadsheets, enabling accurate and consistent data that they can trust.
5. Wide range of capabilities
No matter the business need – whether financial, risk, operational or logistical — spreadsheets can handle it. From financial planning and product development to compliance, businesses can and do make critical decisions from information stored on spreadsheets.
6. Flexibility
Flexibility to change assumptions and input data can be a significant time-saver, resulting in spreadsheets that can be multi-purposed, which is a huge benefit to businesses.
7. Ubiquity
The spreadsheet is the most widely used data storage, manipulation, and modeling tool, and a core building block for businesses of all sizes. They are a fundamental part of every department, from finance to planning to reporting.
8. Staying Power
Spreadsheets have been around for over 3 decades, and they aren’t going away soon. Despite rumors to the contrary, reports of Excel’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Millions of users continue to love their spreadsheets and can be quite passionate about it. In fact, as noted in a Wall Street Journal article entitled “Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands”, “Lots of intelligent and otherwise rational people would sooner clobber you with a bat than let you separate them from Excel.” Now that’s passion.
9. K.I.S.S.
Keep It Simple, Stupid is an adage that may seem a little bit neanderthal in today’s complex, computer-driven world, but spreadsheets still hold true to this value. From the easiest data manipulation to the most complex algorithmic calculation, there is no doubt spreadsheets continue to provide the foundation for moving businesses forward.
10. You can just have a good time.
Spreadsheets are not always about the serious use of scientific data. Whether for personal or professional use, sometimes projecting trends, experimenting with timelines, adjusting numbers, and performing “what if” scenarios can produce surprising results.
Trust the data that drives your business. If you rely on the power of spreadsheets to support your business, and want to trust the data that drives it, Incisive Software’s spreadsheet management software can help you reach this goal.
