If you haven’t read the blog post on this blog site by Sean Elliott about simplifying the work of a financial director, I would take a quick read here. Although he covers some product specific material, his message should resonate anyone who manages finances across the globe. He is a modern example of someone that has experienced the ongoing drag of doing manual work with Excel spreadsheets and has been exposed to, and realized, the inefficiency of the “old” way of working with Excel. Is he the lucky one though? As he pointed out, he works with us, so obviously we have to eat our own dog food and as result he is our own very best case study in creating more time for financial directors to spend more time making decision based on information at his disposal, and less time trying to get the information to a point where he can start making decisions.
So why is he the lucky one, because by nature of what we do we are always looking for ways to make BI easier for end users easier, and specifically we are trying to change the way people use Excel. Not every business spends their time thinking about these things. So he has adopted a new way of working with Excel and we have made massive gains as a result, but how many financial directors out there are still stuck in a place where doing manual cut and paste processes each day/week/ month is just what you have to do with Excel. Well my prompt would be to move on, it doesn’t have to be done this way anymore, but progress depends on you making a decision to do things differently. Not because of Sean’s experience and because we can provide a case study of success , but because it is costing you a silly amount of money to work so inefficiently.
If you don’t believe me use this efficiency calculator to see for yourself in your own business. Have you considered what inefficient Microsoft Excel methods are costing your business? Do a silly quick and simple mental sum – if you have 2 people in your organisation using Excel for 5 hours per day each and they cost you roughly $10 per hour each, how much money could you save if these 2 people could spend less time hacking around in Excel. Confused, try this calculator for yourself and I can guarantee you that you will be staggered at how much money your company is wasting on inefficient use of Excel. There are solutions available for you to get more organized and efficient, you need to make the decision that using Excel manually “the way it’s always been done” is old school.
