Breaking up is hard to do, but you need to take the first steps if you’re suffering from symptoms described in our last post on how Excel can cripple your business.

Depending on your source of pain and size of problem, there are several approaches you can take to make your spreadsheets more efficient.

1. Use DropBox or OneDrive to share those Excel files
If simply making sure everyone has the latest version of that Excel file is your issue, we recommend signing up for DropBox or OneDrive to create a shared folder that automatically updates to everyone’s computer. A change made by one person is automatically reflected in everyone else’s copy. However, if you have multiple people trying to edit at the same time you will run into multiple versions of the file being created.

We recommend this approach if you have a single person updating the Excel file and multiple people who are primarily only reviewing the contents.

2. Use Google Docs to replace Excel
The Google Sheets functionality of Google Docs makes sharing your spreadsheets simple, and allows multiple people to edit the same spreadsheet at the same time. You give up some of the advanced formulas and features of Excel, but for most spreadsheet tasks Google Docs is worth a look.

An additional handy feature is you can setup an online form that people can fill out and have it automatically fill in a row on your Google Doc spreadsheet. Easy data entry for your staff without exposing your entire spreadsheet to the whole company.

To use Google Docs for your business, you should subscribe to the Google Apps plan, which starts at $5 per user in your organization, per month. In addition to all the Google Docs you can also setup your corporate email to run through GMail if you wish.

3. Use Smartsheets to replace Excel
Smartsheets is like Google Sheets on steroids. If you’ve ever wanted enhanced support for nested rows, comments and attachments on rows, and date/time/Gantt functionality, while still being shareable and editable by multiple people at once, then Smartsheets is worth a try. Prices start at $10-15 per user per month.

4. Use Zapier with Google Docs or Smartsheets to automate business processes
Once your data is online with one of these services, we can now wire it up to cause other actions to happen automatically. For example, entering a row in one of these spreadsheets could automatically cause an email to be sent to a sales rep, an invoice to be created if you use an online accounting package, or a task can be created in your ticketing system. Even send a text message to one of your foremen to advise them of a new job.

Zapier is one of the most full-featured integration services, linking not just Google Docs and Smartsheets but dozens of online apps. Pricing is based on the number of times they perform an action on your behalf, with an entry point of $20-$50/month. Pricing for the online apps is not included, i.e. you still have to pay for Google Docs, Smartsheets, and any of the other apps as a separate cost.

5. Build or buy a database-driven web application
The next step up is an online web application that records, stores, tracks, acts upon, and reports on your business data. At this stage many of the problems identified with Excel can be properly addressed.

An online database-driven web application can be accessible to both your staff and your customers, is easily scalable to millions of records and hundreds of people making changes, secures access to different data based on the privileges you assign, and provides enhanced opportunities to integrate with your other systems and automate the processes that drive your business.

A well built web application will improve your organization’s efficiency by allowing your staff to enter data once, automatically share that data with your other applications, and verify the accuracy of the data so your reports and forecasts are accurate. The web application is accessible both in the office and in the field to your staff on their smartphones and tablets – no more waiting until you get back to the office to update a sale or check on a project.

Use your staff’s time and skills to deliver products and services to your client, not to enter and re-enter data into Excel and multiple other applications!

6. Build a mobile application
In some cases a mobile application installed on smartphones and tablets may make the most sense. If there are times when an internet connection isn’t available, or when you want to easily make use of the GPS, camera, microphone, push notifications, and other device functionality, then it is time to create a mobile app for your staff, customers, and potential clients.

The potential for a mobile app is endless, especially when you build upon your existing applications and the many cloud services that are available to easily expand the functionality and features of your app.

Conclusion

Don’t be a slave to your Excel spreadsheets. There are many ways to put your business data and processes to work for you, freeing up time and saving you money!

When you’re ready to step beyond Excel, contact us for a free initial technology consultation on how you can make the break!

Stop me if you’ve heard this shouted across your office – “Who has MonthlySalesNovember.xls open? I need to make changes!!”

Excel creeps into every organization early in its growth, and rightfully so. It solves many tracking problems in an easy way everyone can understand.

“We’ll track our upcoming jobs in this spreadsheet, then we’ll copy that job over to the invoicing spreadsheet, and don’t forget our staff scheduling spreadsheet to try and match back to our upcoming jobs spreadsheet. Now let’s add a spreadsheet to track our employees, our inventory, our orders, our customers, their orders, our equipment, and a few more that we’ve thought of, all before lunch time.”

After a while, you look around and realize half your time (and your staff’s time) is spent as a slave to Excel. Updating, viewing, administering, copying, and sharing spreadsheets has become all you do, and the frustration with Excel’s limitations is building.

There are 8 areas where Excel will eventually cripple your company. They happen at different stages during your growth. In our next article we’ll discuss some of the ways to tame and replace Excel.

1. One person can make changes
   The first problem most people encounter. John left for coffee/lunch/holidays and didn’t close the spreadsheet on his computer. Now the Excel file is locked and you can’t edit it.
2. One person has to make changes
   No, that isn’t an echo to #1 you’re hearing. Soon you have 20 staff out working, and they send everything back to the one person in the office who tracks it all in Excel. And he’s overloaded trying to keep up. Now you hire some help, maybe split the first spreadsheet into two so each person has an area that they enter data into. You wanted to hire people to make money, not spend 6 hours a day entering data into Excel spreadsheets. Why can’t your field staff just enter the information once, rather than recording it and sending it in to the office to be re-recorded in Excel?
3. Hard to share
   How many time have you left the office without the latest copy of the spreadsheet you need? Or the copy that you have is already out of date because your office crew just updated the weekly numbers. And then your colleagues all have a different version which requires an email with the latest latest copy before you can discuss the numbers.
4. Manual reporting
   Sorting and filtering to get the view you want is tedious manual work. Grouping and total rows, yep, more manual tweaking after the wizards get you part of the way there. Pivot tables? Hope you have a couple hours to spare and enjoy a challenge, or have a guru handy (yes, your nephew likely does count, if he’s nearby).
5. Fragile and cranky
   One of your staff created a beautiful spreadsheet, with everything summarized, charted, and displayed on multiple worksheets. Now that she’s on vacation, nobody is willing to make any changes because the inter-linked formulas and references make it impossible to know if you’ve just broken the calculation on the fourth tab.
6. Unscalable
   Excel doesn’t scale to support either a large number of users (see #1 and #2), nor a large amount of data. It’s a great problem to have when your monthly sales won’t fit on one tab. Or your weekly sales. But Excel isn’t helping track things now, it’s getting in the way.
7. No history
   Who changed that row? I swear I updated our inventory to show we were almost out last month.
   Didn’t we have over 300 customers listed? Why are we down to 275?
   What do you mean our sales forecast was overly optimistic? When did those sales records change?
8. Insecure
   No file be considered secure when you have 10, 20, 50 copies or more, both current and past versions, in emails, on laptops, on mobile phones, tablets, at home, at work, and on the road. Everyone who can find a copy of the spreadsheet can see all the data on that spreadsheet. And no, hiding rows, columns, and tabs does not make it secure! Neither does your Excel password protection (where the password was sent out in the email along with the attached spreadsheet).

That sounds pretty drastic. Luckily, there are solutions. Better tools, ways to share data, methods to integrate with other tools, and custom database-driven online web and mobile apps are the natural progression. We’ll give you tips on where to look for solutions in our next article.

If this sounds like your office and you’re frustrated with Excel, contact us today to discuss your business web app and mobile app options. We offer a free initial consultation to hear what your areas of pain are. We’ll suggest smart solutions that can be implemented to make things in your business run more efficiently, so you have time to go out and work on your business, not your spreadsheets!