The growing need for real-time insights and the rise of IT consolidation may relegate spreadsheets from a mainstream tool to one that supports a more specialized function for a smaller group of users.
It’s hard to believe spreadsheets debuted over 40 years ago. It’s possible a few of you may recall or at least know about the launch of Lotus 1-2-3 in 1983 and Excel in 1985 (on a Mac), followed by the Windows version in 1987. Today, Google Sheets are an increasingly popular way to manage projects, along with a variety of project management platforms that also feature a spreadsheet-like user experience. While spreadsheets don’t appear to be going away any time soon, do they still make sense?
For a small business or a solo operator, they do. Even for some larger companies, spreadsheets are frequently relied upon because they’re so easy to set up and populate. It gets tricky, however, when they need to be shared with colleagues. This can lead to degradation of data as parts of the spreadsheets are reused, cut and pasted and find their way into other apps and information sources used throughout the company.
However, the ubiquity of spreadsheets in the enterprise can’t be overlooked. It’s likely due to our mastery of them over the years. From a productivity perspective, however, spreadsheets can be a silent killer.
This is because of the busy work associated with extracting information from spreadsheets and importing it into a different platform, app, or other reporting tool. Whether that information is kept on a spreadsheet, saved on a colleague’s desktop, shared in the cloud, or exported as a .csv file, the time spent accessing and extracting the right information to get a big-picture view of any activity across the organization takes longer than you may expect.
A recent productivity survey reports that employees can spend 11 hours per week hopping from spreadsheets to apps to platforms and back again just to create weekly or quarterly status reports. Now think about the overall productivity drain when a team of employees is squandering their day pulling together reports.
This wasted productivity, a.k.a. gray work, makes it hard for a business to gain a strategic advantage because employees are spending more than a quarter of their time piecing information together. Forcing them to tap multiple sources of information, often from overlapping functions in different yet complementary tools and apps, leads to inconsistencies, human errors, and even more gray work. Along with undermining competitive advantage because it takes so long to get insights, this process also impacts employee morale as work becomes tedious.
A Rise in IT Consolidation May Impact the Use of Enterprise Spreadsheets
Another factor that may impact the future use of spreadsheets in the enterprise is the rise in IT consolidation. A recent survey of more than 1,000 IT professionals finds that nine in 10 say software consolidation is a priority for their organization this year.
There are several drivers behind it, including app sprawl, security risks, costs, and overall frustration with having to manage so many tools. It’s not just IT that wants to see consolidation; there is also pressure coming from the C-Suite and Boards.
The amount of consolidation and levels of frustration vary by organization, but it’s important to note that 75% of organizations report using more than 10 software applications, and nearly two-thirds support at least five project management tools. It’s no wonder that 80% of IT professionals struggle with effectively managing all those software applications.
While we can expect to see major strides in IT consolidation this year, it won’t happen overnight, especially since one-half of survey respondents report they are overwhelmed by the thought of it.
See also: Calling the Shots: Navigating Business Destiny with Data-Driven Strategies
Getting to Real-time Insights
A successful IT consolidation strategy should begin with the end in mind. This means thinking about how to make it easy for employees to access accurate, real-time insights without being mired in gray work.
For a lot of organizations, consolidating apps, tools, and information onto a single work management platform while maintaining and integrating data from specialized solutions such as an ERP or CRM solves this issue.
Maintaining some legacy tools as the majority of the enterprise shifts to a centralized platform allows for the right balance of flexibility while protecting, preserving, and sharing critical information during the IT consolidation process.
To do this requires a careful evaluation of existing tools to determine what to keep. Those decisions will not be driven by cost or usage alone. They will also need to factor in redundant tools, support for mission-critical data, and any potential data migration issues. There is also the balancing act for IT in effectively consolidating the tech stack without compromising productivity through unexpected downtime.
Along with avoiding IT downtime, you also want to make it easy for employees to approach a new way to get work done. For example, employees who are used to doing things a certain way may be reluctant to adopt a new platform or process if it is unfamiliar. This is where a spreadsheet-like experience on a centralized platform is beneficial to reducing or eliminating learning curves without being held back by the limitations of information silos created by spreadsheets.
This strategy also sets up the organization to support future business needs more easily. For example, when IT consolidation provides the organization with a single source of truth that is managed on a work management platform, it is easier to accelerate the use of AI because employees are confident in the quality of the underlying data.
Based on the IT Pro survey results, the benefits of consolidating IT stacks include productivity increases, streamlined operations, and reduced costs. Also, it allows more time for strategic decision making because shifts in the industry or business can be identified and addressed earlier, as opposed to reacting to what appear to be unexpected changes due to a prior lack of visibility into the business.
While spreadsheets will still be used in the enterprise, their role is evolving from a mainstream tool to one that supports a more specialized function for a smaller group of users. This results from the need for productivity and collaboration to deliver real-time insights without the confines of spreadsheet cells.
