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How to supercharge your spreadsheets for digital business

Ask a finance team what tool they can’t live without and they’re most likely to say Microsoft Excel.

Since its release in 1985, Excel has grown to be one of the most important tools in business today. It’s quick, powerful and readily available on most computers. It’s little wonder 89 per cent of businesses use Excel for budgeting, planning and forecasting.

But as we advance into the digital age, your business is dealing with increasingly large and complex volumes of data. You need supercharged spreadsheets to compete effectively in this world.

Managing spreadsheets

Greater collaboration has been a big win for business but it’s not without challenges. Managing spreadsheets is one of them. In the hands of multiple people in multiple departments, the humble spreadsheet can quickly become a nightmare.

Different teams will tweak a template to make it more relevant to their specific needs. Chaos ensues if somebody who manages formulas for an important spreadsheet leaves your business. The lack of standardization makes it difficult for larger companies to manually manage finances using Excel.

User error

More than 90 per cent of corporate spreadsheets have material errors, according to PwC and KPMG. When used accurately, spreadsheets are highly efficient but the added complexity of business today makes them prone to user error.

This has happened in large, high-profile businesses with big consequences. The 2012 London Olympics oversold 10,000 tickets for the synchronized swimming event, after an employee hit a “2” instead of a “1” in a spreadsheet, indicating that there were 20,000 tickets remaining.

In companies without cloud technology, staff can’t make live updates to spreadsheets. They have to pass them around the department in order to have them updated. It not only makes updating financial documents a slow process, but leads to further risk of mistakes and issues with ensuring there is a single version on hand.

Insights

Excel is a phenomenal tool – but it’s only as good as the person using it when interrogating data. If you’re working with raw data from Excel, you’ll need to be a master code-cracker with some serious time on your hands to generate insights that will move your business forward. However, there are smart analytics tools that will help everyone in your organization find better insights without needing to be a data scientist.

So what’s better than Excel?

We know how much finance teams love Excel. The good news is there’s no need to replace it when you can supercharge it with Jet Analytics.Jet Analytics was built by finance people, for finance people and the teams they serve. This means you can simplify your business planning and reporting. In fact, oneJet Analytics powered Excel webpage is the equivalent of hundreds of individual spreadsheets.

To find out how Innovia Consulting andJet Analytics can supercharge your spreadsheets, view our webinar below.

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Jet Global

Jet Global

Jet Global is a collective of fun, passionate people dedicated to building and delivering the best reporting and analytics solutions available in the marketplace today. We devote our professional lives to providing unparalleled access to data through fast and flexible solutions that are cost effective, provide rapid time-to-value, and are built specifically for the needs of Microsoft Dynamics ERP users.

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