When we started our business 15 years ago, it was based on the premise that Microsoft® Excel® is the lifeblood software application for businesses and accountants around the world.
A decade and a half on, it was very interesting and enlightening for me to read the opinions of all these experts: 27 Excel Experts Predict The Future of Excel in Business Intelligence.
Two of the comments from the article that particularly resonate with me are:
1. “What is the most used feature in any business intelligence solution? It is the Export to Excel button.” – Purna Duggirala – Chandoo
and
2. “No matter how many systems a company has, how big they are, or how many millions of dollars have been spent on them, the reality is that the majority of data is exported to Excel before decisions of serious consequence are made” – Ken Puls – Excel Guru
It remains mind blowing for me to see how much money companies invest in sophisticated BI applications, only to revert to Excel at the end of the day. Fortunately Microsoft have done a great job in continually enhancing the analytical and graphical functions within Excel which makes it an ideal platform for the masses to analyze and present data. It’s what people know, it’s what they have grown up with, and it’s what they trust.
These expert views are strongly supported by many SMB customers who invariably default to Excel to try and make sense of their data. This is where our reporting tool, Sage Intelligence, can play such a key role. Sage Intelligence delivers data from a Sage accounting database via a structured and secure environment into Microsoft Excel report templates. The power of Excel can then be leveraged to analyze and share the data and make informed business decisions. Sage Intelligence provides the ‘plumbing’ for customers to easily get insight into their data and focus on analyzing their information, as opposed to spending their precious time grappling with extracting, cut and pasting. Yet, best of all, the information is presented in Excel which is familiar, and allows them to confidently personalize, customize or manipulate further according to their needs, or take advantage of the mobility offered by extended solutions like Power BI. Take a look at these seven reasons to use Sage Intelligence to leverage the power of Excel.
Excel plays an integral role in various stages of data consumption, and I believe that companies going forward will continue to use Excel pervasively, alongside all the cool additional stuff that Microsoft develops to support mobility, like the Power BI suite. Excel will always be the language of business and accountants, albeit coupled with complimentary solutions like Sage Intelligence and Power BI.
