7 Ways Spreadsheets Will Ruin Your Life
In search of resources and tools to manage the company more efficiently, it is quite common for managers to resort to the use of management spreadsheets.
In this attempt, whether due to the volume of tabs needed to encompass all managerial operations, the complexity of construction, updating and maintenance, or even the vulnerability in data security, the results, in most cases, are negative.
Even when, apparently, everything seems to work perfectly.
Understand better why you should abolish spreadsheets for business management in your business and replace it with more robust management tools like eLeaP LMS .
7 Ways Spreadsheets Will Ruin Your Life
Excel spreadsheets used to be the main tool for HR managers to assess agents in their operations. Using quality management software to track activities will streamline your process and reveal new opportunities for improvement. However, there are still some people who keep their spreadsheets for the familiarity they provide and the fact that they can be easily modified. Spreadsheets can go against achieving your organization’s quality goals and objectives.
1: They Waste Your Time:
Time is money, and investing it in spreadsheets means wasting it.
Spreadsheets create silos. Teams are divided into people who work on their own spreadsheets. This wreaks havoc. Your teams give or receive conflicting information. Old data is confused with newer data. And the priorities are not clear. No one knows what they have to work on each day. What’s more, nobody remembers when it was: today, yesterday or two weeks ago? Before you know it, your best people will be wasting time updating spreadsheet after spreadsheet.
Let’s analyze it: suppose you have to manage a team of five people. Each team member spends an hour a week updating spreadsheets. That makes a total of five hours a week and 20 hours a month. Let’s say the average full-time employee costs about $50 an hour. That said, spreadsheet maintenance is costing you roughly $1,000 a month . Ouch!
Solution: A work management tool can help you automate the administrative work that spreadsheets require so you can focus on the work that matters most. Software like eLeaP takes care of the more tedious and repetitive tasks, like creating templates and automatically assigning work. Plus, they free you and your team members to do the creative work they’ve been hired to do.
2: They are full of errors
The most common errors in spreadsheets involve input data, formulas, calculations, and formatting. As more errors occur, the greater the risk to the organization.
Creating spreadsheets requires manual input of data and formulas, which creates the real possibility of errors or, even worse, data analysis errors over time. Accessing data from different sources and relying on manual data entry and formula creation creates more risk of errors. Even a little information entered incorrectly can lead to a chain of negative events. Implementing real-time digital spreadsheets will dramatically increase the accuracy of call center information so that performance can be properly measured based on accurate data. Making changes to a quality management system is easy and does not affect the accuracy of reports.
Solution: A work management tool allows you and your team to work together, so that all the work you do is in real time. The latest version is always on your screen. Everything is updated and saved immediately. If you need to see the old version of something, eLeaP’s Revision History allows you to go back and access older versions of the document.
3: They are a Legal Liability risk:
The very thing that businesses were trying to reduce can be exposed through spreadsheets of risk data. Discover common spreadsheet errors so that your business can reduce its exposure to risk.
Have you ever accidentally deleted fields from an online spreadsheet and were unable to retrieve them later? We’ve all done it. This scenario, unfortunately, is more than just a little embarrassing for most businesses. It can actually be a liability.
Data gathering, maintenance, and aggregation errors can cause significant financial loss due to spreadsheet risk.
In simple spreadsheets, businesses assume spreadsheet risk when gathering, tracking and storing critical data manually.
A company’s risk can be reported internally and externally by collecting data from throughout an organization, and mistakes can be costly and detrimental to a business’ reputation when gathering this data. Understanding common spreadsheet errors is the first step toward preventing spreadsheet risk.
4. They are not secure
What happens when you send an Excel spreadsheet to your team? Well, the confidential information on the sheet appears in all the inboxes. What happens if a disgruntled employee leaves the company? Or if someone outside the company gains access to your email?
Spreadsheets that are saved locally have some protections, such as restricted access , but they are primarily directed at the structure rather than the actual data. Excel spreadsheets with proprietary data can be extremely expensive if compromised. That is why it is important to consolidate the information as much as possible, so that you can control access to it at all times.
Online spreadsheets have better protections, like viewing permissions , but you’re still exposed to considerable risk .
Solution: Sharing data in a work management tool allows you to completely customize what you want to share and what you want to keep private.
Thanks to eLeaP LMS, you can select who can see and edit the data, as well as delete it at any time and keep the information in one safe place.
Security: spreadsheets lack an easy way to manage adequate information security based on access profiles and are easy enough to manage these changes and make them available in real time to all users.
5. Spreadsheets are not available 24/7
As business and organizational needs change, managing multiple versions of an assessment form becomes very difficult if you are using spreadsheets. Typically, you end up with multiple versions and broken reports.
Even if you use spreadsheets in the cloud to facilitate access for all professionals who need to deal with them 24 hours for access, don’t be fooled: the vulnerability of the timely availability of your business’s data and information is high.
This is because spreadsheets are not very flexible in terms of defining a 24 hours usage hierarchy. Whether to view or edit your work in spreadsheets.
6. Spreadsheets exclude your end users:
As business and organizational needs change, managing multiple versions of an assessment form becomes very difficult if you are using spreadsheets. Typically, you end up with multiple versions and broken reports.
Making predictions and strategizing for the business shouldn’t be a guessing game, especially when automated dashboards can provide critical information to support quality control initiatives.
Using spreadsheets to score and track agent performance is an exercise in futility as it is outdated, and as soon as it becomes difficult to share results, it usually means that feedback will be applied at the end of the month. Coaching and meetings cannot be as productive when information is not up to date. Sheets can be easily lost or corrupted, which means loss of data and reports.
7. Spreadsheets won’t reduce your cost:
Any business wants to maximize profits by pricing their goods and services at the right level. Traditionally for many businesses price management has been conducted using spreadsheets to calculate optimum prices – and to convey these prices to all concerned in the sales process. No-one is saying that spreadsheet pricing is a completely flawed system of managing pricing but the modern, accurate and more efficient way is to use a Pricing Software solution rather than the old fashioned methods that are so susceptible to error, manipulation and corruption.
In businesses, we typically use spreadsheets to manage a pricing strategy based on cost-plus pricing, discount pricing from a list price, or other simple pricing methods. Although it ensures you’ll make money selling your goods or services, it ignores a host of other factors that determine the willingness of the customer to pay. Perhaps most importantly, it disregards value-based pricing.
How does your current price management process affect your business? In order to improve your profits, you need to use a Pricing Solution to optimize your prices and avoid critical errors. That is the least you can do for your business.
Conclusion
Want to avoid all these problems when using spreadsheets?
Meet eLeaP LMS , an easy-to-use business and learning management software that brings complete control panels, with all the data you need to manage your business.