ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
Why Leaving Excel Behind Leads To Improved EPM
For decades, many companies have relied on Excel spreadsheets to support Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) processes. Spreadsheets were used for Budgeting, Planning, Reporting and more. Many companies are having a hard time giving up the trusted old Excel spreadsheet for a more sophisticated Enterprise Performance Management system. "It's too expensive," and, "It's too complicated," and, "We have so much invested in our spreadsheets," are common reasons enterprises cite for not making the switch. Here's the truth that enterprises need to know about leaving Excel for a modern EPM.
Excel is Costing Your Business More Than You Realise
As with all manual processes, Excel is extremely vulnerable to human error.
Excel might look cheap on paper, because it comes with Office Pro, which most businesses buy as standard software. The hidden costs are numerous, however. First, Excel is tremendously time consuming. Each department usually uses their own templates and methods to create their spreadsheets, which have to be deciphered later by Accounting or Auditors. Excel is fraught with human errors due to its manual processes, and does not offer the transparency demanded by today's business environment.
Excel is a Security Risk
The primary way to transmit an Excel spreadsheet between employees and departments is via email. However, email is inherently insecure. In fact, email is the number one way that businesses get infiltrated and hacked. Additionally, Excel spreadsheets (even after deleted) can live on old computers and servers, holding sensitive information about the business, its employees, proprietary secrets, financial standing, etc. Excel spreadsheets can also get out of the organisation via stolen laptops, rogue or careless employees, and other mishaps. A modern EPM eliminates all of these security concerns, as these solutions are endowed with enterprise grade security features.
Excel is Riddled With Human Errors
As a manual process, even the best kept Excel spreadsheets are filled with errors entered by people. Employees misread or mistype fields. People forget things, and accidentally type over things, and get careless about entries and simply do not add necessary fields. EPM solutions are designed to detect when someone is trying to enter invalid information into a field or when a necessary field is missing information. While it is impossible to make an EPM totally immune to a certain amount of human error, EPM software provides far more accurate and complete data and reporting than does a spreadsheet.
Excel is Not Flexible and Scalable
Excel can't grow with a business. Once spreadsheets reach a certain size and complexity, it is difficult to manage the data, which makes Planning and Reporting difficult or impossible.
Cloud-Based EPM solutions are designed to grow and bend as the business evolves. Excel can't do that. All Excel users can do is add more spreadsheets or extend the existing spreadsheets until those are even more unmanageable and unwieldy. A modern enterprise needs data to be readily available in a timely manner for real-time or near-real-time Reporting and Analysis. There is simply no scenario in which an Excel spreadsheet can compete with an EPM solution in the modern age of Big Data and Data Analytics.
Learn more about how the days of the Excel spreadsheet are over and it's time to move to a Cloud-Based EPM solution. Surprisingly, Cloud-Based EPM software is more affordable than dealing with the errors of a spreadsheet and easier than trying to make spreadsheets grow with the business.