The accessibility of Excel spreadsheets has made it a hit with business users of all stripes. It's fairly common knowledge that Excel is among the world's most widely used database tools in the business sector - somewhere to the tune of about half a billion. But nothing destroys a CEO's confidence in his team as much as dueling excel reports. Our latest infographic reveals how errors in Excel reports can make a big mess in very short order.
A Dramedy of Errors
Sometimes the frustration with Excel reporting reads like a scene from NBC's The Office. But in most cases it's completely frustrating without any laughter at all. The reality is that as spreadsheets and databases grow in complexity, the more errors are present with each new Excel report. In fact, roughly 88% of all business-specific Excel documents contain errors In a funny turn of events, a University of Massachusetts graduate student exposed errors in Harvard economists' Carmen Reinhart's and Kenneth Rogoff's spreadsheets.
Excel Errors Flow Upstream
When developing reports in the Excel environment, it's tempting to believe that the buck stops with you. That is, no one else will - or at least very few people - will be affected by errors in your Excel reports. The opposite is actually true. In the business environment these mistakes tend to flow upstream. This is usually fueled by half-baked data that is sent up the channel to C-level executives who then make decisions based on incorrect, or insufficient data. Then this trickles back down stream to analysts, marketing professionals and sales professionals as they make smart decisions with the wrong data.
Why Your Data Needs to be Perfect
The bottom line is that no one can make smart financial decisions within your organization if all they have to go on is flawed data. No matter how smart or talented your financial team is, if they are dealing with error-filled Excel reports, any smart decision that is made will never be all that smart. All of this needs to be taken into account as you consider the pros and cons of Excel, and how it fits your big picture plan for business growth and financial sustainability. In the business world, little mistakes soon balloon into larger, regrettable mistakes.
