They are shortchanging themselves.” But he is quick to point out that “many workers are forced to use the tool due to lack of better solutions being made available. The perils of compounded errors from manual and unsanctioned modifications, unmanaged multiple versions of data, and data management scalability limitations are just some of the (many) shortcomings that come to mind.Ī colleague has made his opinion of spreadsheets known, going so far as to say that “anyone who uses spreadsheets for any use case outside of accounting or finance could be guilty of data negligence. While there are many benefits of the digital spreadsheet, overreliance on it to manage a company’s customer, vendor, and financial master data might do more harm than good. In fact, the majority of data practitioners I know use Excel on a day-to-day basis. This isn’t such a bad thing, in my opinion. In my opinion, digital spreadsheets made data more available and less intimidating for those who were outside the seemingly exclusive world of the database elites.Īs digital spreadsheets became part of the common and daily arsenal of the business world, they inevitably found their way into the realms of data management.
Spreadsheets introduced the power of data cubes through the gateway we now call pivot tables, and of course, they allowed us an easy but detailed way to modify data. Just as Word and other programs opened up the world of desktop publishing to every computer user, Excel and other tools opened up the world of graphs and data visualizations. They became a game changer in business operations beyond just bookkeeping and accounting. Today it seems as though Excel spreadsheets and workbooks have taken over the world. Through the digital spreadsheet, I was able to build my dream baseball team. One of the first things I did was create stats aggregations using baseball cards of my favorite players. I remember diving into them when I was first introduced to Lotus 1-2-3 as a grade schooler. Digital Spreadsheets – A Favorite of Many However, there is a big qualifier here: if you know when to use a spreadsheet, how to use a spreadsheet, and for what purpose.
Using Spreadsheets? You’re Doing It Wrong!ĭigital spreadsheets are arguably one of the better productivity tools created since the invention of the modern personal computer.
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