Flexible tools

You may have heard the words. "Excel-hell".

Defn: The proliferation of Excel spreadsheets through an organization hindering people with their unmanageable and error-prone nature. Usually a band-aid solution used for budgeting or reporting when staff have no other option. Okay, and it's almost free.

But the BI industry has been steering companies away from this for years. BI tools provide all the benefits that Excel doesn't, like distributing web-based reports to many people or programmatically pulling data from disparate sources. So why is Excel still used by so many?

Because Excel is highly flexible and the layout can be changed on a whim. And people rely on what they know best. See Cindi Howson's article comparing Excel.

An executive asks for her numbers to be summed on the monthly report and graphed. It's done in a couple steps. While this seems terrific on the face, this leads a business down the rabbit hole (Excel-hell) where it lacks all the benefits that BI tools provide.

Find the right tool that meets your unique business needs and the needs of the business people.