4 Signs You've Outgrown Excel and Why Low-Code Is the Way Forward
MS Excel was never intended to be a database tool, but today it is arguably the most commonly used one.
Every business, particularly when just starting, finds MS Excel the perfect tool. This is because organizations need digital tools to create, manage, and speed up their processes, but they can't commit to implementing the right business applications at that point, as they are trying out things and need flexibility.
With MS Excel, the flexibility is that businesses can create data repositories in the way they please and can then manually link tasks to these repositories and stitch together processes in this way. But this is reliant on individuals who must know what data sits where, how to interpret it, how to update sheets, and so on. And soon after, organizations run into problems because of this.
Has your organization reached that stage where MS Excel has become a curse that is keeping everyone from doing their best? Here are the signs to watch out for.
1. Over-Reliance on Certain People
MS Excel allows you to be unstructured. When your process is so unstructured, MS Excel is ideal as you have 100% control over how you use it. It will collect data as you define, and how the different data repositories come together in a process you can define in loosely worded SOPs or even just verbally teach to employees.
In the process, people will use this info and will find issues if any or perform the actions they need to do. For this, there is reliance on people who are very good with Excel, very good with numbers, and very good with process knowledge.
Over time this reliance just keeps on increasing. So what happens when these individuals leave the organization? Leaders find that processes begin to crumble down and it takes very long for them to bring everything back to the same levels of efficiency.
When you want to run fast, you need to build an organization that is not over-reliant on any individual, as then it becomes only as strong as the weakest link. So, if you feel that this over-dependence on individuals who know their way with worksheets is causing work to slow down, then you know your business has outgrown MS Excel.
2. Can't Enforce Accuracy and Speed
It is sad but common that in organizations, people need so much help just to remember the SOPs of their work. This takes away vital mind space from actually doing the work right and instead is used to recall the workflow. They always need to ask something from a colleague or a supervisor or, worse still, have to be nudged by a fuming customer to realize they need to do something quickly.
This happens largely because your information database is MS Excel, which means nothing is stitched together and people have to remember the linkages. Over time, processes become complex and it becomes impossible for employees to work without committing errors.
So, if you feel that your employees, despite their best efforts, are committing too many errors in their work, and you are having to invest resources in expensive reviews and quality checks, this could well point to the impact of using MS Excel as your business database.
3. There Is a Leakage in the Production
If there is a huge gap between what your production should be when calculated as per your planning model, and what you actually produce, then it could well be because of factors that slow down your people from doing their work.
Among these, the biggest one is that people must refer to bulky and inconveniently designed MS Excel sheets to find the information they need to do their work. It's not uncommon for people to wait for half a minute for an MS Excel file with thousands of rows to open up. This half a minute isn't much, but it breaks the cognitive rhythm that keeps workers tuned into their work. Then, navigating bulky Excel sheets with many workbooks is not easy either.
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What all this results in is that people feel they have a heavy weight tied on their backs when they work, and this can be mentally draining and demotivating and will manifest in production leakages.
4. Decisions Are Based on Gut Feelings
Business leaders face this issue a lot. They know the problem, and they have ideas on how to solve it. But to be sure, they need to find insights. For instance, if too many customers have complained of late deliveries in the last quarter, then data analysis could reveal interesting insights around:
But the more difficult it becomes to get the data they need to be able to check for these hypotheses, the less accurate their eventual diagnosis will be.
Even more than that, for your organization to be the best, data-backed decision-making has to be the norm, the automatic way of thinking. When there is a step of someone having to ask for data, and then to collate that data, and then run analysis on it, then over time leaders fall into a habit of over-relying on their hunch. This can be very bad for a business, particularly when competitors are able to do much better because of making decisions based on data. The opportunity cost in this case is massive.
How Is Low-Code the Way Out of Excel Hell?
Of course, it's not enough just to know when your business has outgrown MS Excel. When it does, you need a system that supports autonomous and error-proof work where people know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, and have the data they need when and where they need it, without having to remember anything. This is exactly the promise of Low-Code.
Anyone who feels that moving away from MS Excel to a business application platform will mean going from complete flexibility of process design to having to run the process through hoops must know that Low-Code is very different from how traditional business applications were made.
Take a sales CRM for example. In the past, such an application would be entirely coded and users would be given complicated configuration panels to make the application fit their processes. This can work but is very tedious. Even more than that, once the implementation is done (which can be very expensive and time-consuming), businesses realized it's very difficult to carry out changes in the CRM quickly. To the extent that people realize they need to just live with the system and change the process of work to fit the system.
This is the problem that Low-Code solves. Low-Code platforms work by ensuring everyone in your organization can develop the application they need to do their work error-free, and fast. This happens because everyone can use a Low-Code platform to create an app without having to know how to code. That's because the platform is available with a GUI which has pre-built modules, data connectors, workflow builders, and visual tools that can create the corresponding code in the backend and create the app you need.
This democratizes application programming and frees up the time for IT to do game-changing developments, which they can now do 10 times faster and at 1/4th the cost.
We have learned so many times from our customers why so many organizations never think beyond Excel because they fear the chaos of having to implement the right business application. So, we knew that we had been right when we built Amoga—our Low-Code platform—on the solid philosophy of Low-Code. This actually means you can shift from MS Excel to a Low-Code application with ease, without overspending, and while retaining total control of how you want to do your business, as the application is very easy to mould according to the changing priorities of the business. For a more detailed conversation on how Low-Code can help you transition away from MS Excel-based business management, please ask us for a conversation.