Here’s Why You Should Ditch Excel Spreadsheets for Custom Software in 2024
Why use excel spreadsheets when your life is already chaotic enough? Save yourself some hours of stress by choosing custom software in 2024.
Hundreds of workbooks in a single excel sheet is a recipe for chaos. One wrong click, and you and your team will have to spend hours to figure out what the problem is.
Traditional excel spreadsheets offer several tools and techniques. Still, I wonder if anyone actually knows how to use it entirely. Even for those who do, it’s hard to imagine them utilizing it flawlessly. Excel’s complexity makes it tough to master, and only a select few can really navigate it with ease.
Every one in five business organizations face financial problems due to excel spreadsheets. Why are majority of the companies still using it, then? Companies keep using spreadsheets because they are free, not realizing the long-term cost they are paying.
5 Reasons to Ditch Excel Spreadsheets for Custom Software
Technology has evolved rapidly, making now the perfect time to upgrade to more efficient data management software. Excel spreadsheets struggle with processing large amounts of data, and you can’t afford to waste hours on a tool as slow as spreadsheets, can you?
Businesses can use the same time and workforce to complete other tasks by switching to custom software to process data. So, automation and custom software are the answer to improving productivity and cutting costs in the longer run.
Increased efficiency and productivity
Custom software is designed specifically for your business needs, helps streamline processes and automate tasks. If you rely on excel sheets, your team does the same work manually, not just wasting your team’s time but also decreasing their productivity. For instance, with data management processes, employees don’t have to spend hours manually adding data into excel sheets where one wrong click can take them an hour back.
Enhanced data accuracy
According to an estimation, 88% of all spreadsheets have errors, and more than 50% have material defects but are still used by large-scale companies (source; CNBC).
The TechRepublic stated, “Troubleshooting an Excel worksheet’s formulas and functions can be a big job. Errors just come with the package”. The probability of error in excel sheets is much higher than in custom software, saving employees hours of stress.
What’s more is that custom software allows you to have built-in filters, i.e., validation or error-checking. Customization reduces the chance of human error and improves the accuracy of your data.
Excel and automation don’t work together
I am sure you are familiar with the anxiety that hits you when your boss calls you to add new rows and columns for new data in an existing spreadsheet, and you can’t get it right. We’ve all been there, and you aren’t the problem, excel is. Excel isn’t just unfriendly with you but with automation as well.
Excel has little to offer when it comes to automation and customization. Automation makes it easier for your employees to add and share data. It’s far easier to keep up with updates in customized software than in excel sheets.
This can result in data losses and your team spending hours hoping to recover the lost data. You don’t want that for your business, do you?
Customized software offers security
Excel spreadsheets DO NOT offer sufficient protection as compared to custom applications. Adding passwords to spreadsheets does not ensure your organization’s safety against cyber-attacks.
Not just that, but a more common problem is that you need help managing different tiers of access to a particular document or system. Personnel with varying clearance levels might need access to the different sections of the same file. Excel spreadsheets do not facilitate this. You cannot access one workbook alone; instead, you’ll have to give access to the whole sheet, which isn’t suitable for businesses.
Custom software can quickly solve this problem for your business. You can establish different access tiers on a particular system and add or remove people in these tiers to determine who sees what.
Accessible and easy to use
Customized applications are more accessible and easy to navigate. Imagine; AcmeOrder.xls, AcmeOrderOld.xls, AcmeOrderv2.xls, Acme2.xls, and Acme.xls all in the same folder. Stressful to even imagine? It also takes much work to locate and use. This is just one example of how chaotic excel spreadsheets are.
Customized applications have solved these problems for many organizations globally. We suggest our clients use customized applications, not excel spreadsheets.
Looking to get a customized app developed? Here’s how we can help you.
We did this for a client and helped them shift to custom software. If you look at the “before” picture, it shows a very manual system, but the “after” photo shows automated custom software.
An app or software is much easier to use on mobile phones. In contrast, excel spreadsheets can be stressful to navigate on the phone, making customized applications a better option for businesses.
And the most painful part is manual labor. Excel requires much manual work, which can be exhausting and stressful if you’re trying to meet a deadline. Choose customized applications for your peace of mind.
Thus, it isn’t an exaggeration to say that excel is very 1990s and doesn’t offer the accessibility and security your business needs today.
