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August 17, 2006
Nothing New, But Still Scary
Yesterday we did a webinar with Business Finance Magazine, on the topic of Business Performance Management, with a few hundred people. As part of the program, we did a little survey. One of the questions was what technologies the people on the call were using. Youd expect a bit of a bias because the topic of the webinar speaks mostly to the imagination of the people whod know about the subject enough to care.
Yet still, 70% of people responded they are using Excel. I have seen statistics like this for a number of years now, but I keep thinking Oh boy.
There is nothing wrong with using Excel as a front-end to more formal system, but Excel as the application, there are serious issues with that.
I recall a newspaper article, here in Europe, from a few months ago. One publicly traded company published its numbers and a few hours later sent out a correction. There was no material differences and all trends were pointing in the same direction, but one employee did put a few numbers in the wrong row or wrong column of the spreadsheet that was used for that report. Immediately the stock market reacted negatively. A spokesperson of the company stated that it was an honest mistake and that the employee had not been disciplined. That was good to hear, but I cant understand how senior management could allow the use of a spreadsheet in such a crucial process.
Actually, I can understand. People like their spreadsheets. It gives the feeling or perception of flexibility. And all the manual work is hidden, these costs are much less visible as implementing and running a more formal system. But these are political reasons.
What I would like to know, dear reader, what solid business reasons are there to use spreadsheets in crucial performance management processes?
frank
Posted by Frank Buytenkijk at August 17, 2006 4:44 PM
