There are some telltale signs that your growing business has outgrown Excel for your reporting needs.
Excel is probably the most adopted piece of software out there, and I don’t know a company that doesn’t use it, but as companies grow they often find that their Excel based reports start to limit them and become increasingly hard to maintain.
When you have simple requirements, and small data volumes then Excel can cover all your reporting needs, however it’s when business ramps up and requirements grow that cracks start to appear.
Here are a few signs that it could be time to move your reporting away from Excel.
* The process needed to create your reports is becoming more and more complex, requiring someone who’s part data analyst, part wizard.
* You want daily reports but the creation process is so long that you can only pull them together once a week or once a month.
* You have different reports with different numbers and no clear idea of which numbers, if any, are correct.
* Your reports give you high level figures but you don’t have the ability to drill into the detail to really interrogate the data and spot trends.
* You have data from different systems you want to report on as one, but it’s difficult or impossible to bring everything together.
If one or more of these apply to you it might be time to move away from Excel, and here you have two options. You can go to an off the shelf product, which can be great if you only have one source system, or you can look at a bespoke reporting solution.
A bespoke solution will firstly perform all the heavy lifting and shifting for you. The entire process of taking the data from the source systems, shaping it, and updating the reports and dashboards is automated, giving you access to insights exactly when you need them. It’s also tailored to your requirements, focusing on the key figures you need to make decisions and run your business.
These systems are also designed to handle a lot of data. You’ll have a single consolidated view of your data from all your systems, allowing you to dive in and explore trends and look at individual transactions without waiting minutes for the report to refresh or having to ask Steve to add another tab to an already creaking spreadsheet.
This can give you real data clarity and can also tell you what you don’t know. For example, you will know your top products and customers, but what about customers who’ve stopped spending or products that have stopped selling? Or what about the slow moving products you’re still buying more of? Higlighting these allows you to identify tends and adjust course, whether it’s contacting customers that are starting to drift or making plans to shift slow moving stock.
Bespoke systems can also be very cost effective. With low cloud hosting costs your outlay can be lower than you’d expect and you can quickly get your ROI.
If Excel is starting to hold you back and you want a chat then please get in touch.