Leave Excel Limitations in 2018
Despite the limitations and lack of flexibility of Excel, it is still the main tool used by FP&A departments for analyzing and reporting data. Excel is a familiar platform that is easy to use, cost friendly, and comes with many formatting and graphing capabilities. However, the negatives far outweigh the positives when using Excel for data analytics. With Excel, calculations are made in reference to their position on a grid. In a modern solution, calculations are named and thus are always applied to the right data. This makes the calculations easy to set up and manage, while with Excel you can only hope the right data is being accessed. In addition, Excel has limitations when being used for data modeling, reporting and data analytics, and combining data from disparate systems. To get users to give up their spreadsheets requires showing them that there is a far better, faster alternative that is secure and doesn’t have the inherent integrity issues.
Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >