Excel is quick and powerful, and really lowers the barrier to entry for capturing data. You can sit in a meeting and throw a bunch of information at a brand new intern and have them copy paste it all into one pretty looking spreadsheet with the filename "Issue Tracking Database.xlsx" and you'll have a database before the meeting is over. No need to worry about all the red tape, bureaucracy, and unnecessary timelines of having to get a DBA or an analyst from another department involved.
But do you
really want to store and track critical workplace actions, the kind that prevent people getting hurt or hundreds of thousands of rand in asset damage, to be sitting in a spreadsheet on a network share somewhere, with people going in and just drag filling data down across hidden rows? Or copy pasting into a different cell than they thought they were working in? Or typing a date the wrong way around and an issue never flags up as overdue?
As Sapphiron mentioned, yes it works fine
now, until it doesn't, and then they'll blame the users for not manually implementing Change Data Capture or Audit Logs
.
Lack of internal training?
Must be a reason they don't use the solution that is provided.
Least path of resistance amongst users, managers don't care about (or prioritise) potential risks of incorrect/lost data. Office politics, not wanting to deal with IT/IS/ERP department, and wanting to silo data and obfuscate it from the rest of business to hide any shortcomings.
Same boat. I’m doing a project supplying data to a 3rd party to predict demand and our supply chain department just can’t seem to wrap their heads around the fact that excel isn’t a database and is a complete pain in the backside to work with. Add to that a couple of macro geniuses and it’s a complete nightmare.
I see you're also dealing with "We don't need normalisation - our Excel database uses
Data Validation!". Next you'll tell us that their idea of revision control is looking in their Outlook Inbox and using whichever version of the file has the most counts of the word "FINAL" in the filename
Different take.
Excel is awesome and the world runs on it.
Because this article was focused on Britain we should also mentioned their lovely non-spreadsheet Post Office system.
So above was a bit tongue in the cheek - but people is going to mess up whether it is Excel or another system. You need to evaluate the needs and risks and costs. Spending a million bucks to replace an unimportant spreadsheet is not wise either. My person experience is people turn to spreadsheets when the systems are shite.
Agreed, it's all about using the right tool for the job. But even if the proper system is better, people are going to take the path of least resistance. If you're going to give them the option of copy pasting any garbage into an Excel sheet, versus having to input data in a DB front end that gets validated and automatically sent for for review/approval, they'll take the option that creates less work for themselves.
Excel is usually the best way to get started and works very well for almost any problem, until one day it doesn't, catastrophically.
Reminds me of the saying: "There are two types of people. Those who make backups, and those who will."
