I love spreadsheets… I think they’re great, indispensable and I’ve used them daily for years (in fact, Microsoft Excel turns 40 this year). They’re simple, familiar and incredibly powerful, like a trusty old pair of shoes that you can always rely on.
- Spreadsheets can do powerful calculations, they’re flexible and they’re widely available.
- Spreadsheets are easy. They allow users to play around with numbers, presentation, formulas and graphs.
- They allow users to easily prototype a report/solution without committing to the final output.
- People have invested time in them, with years spent honing their ‘vlookup’ skills, formatting pivot tables and choosing just the right graph to make their data mean something to someone.
I’m not alone…
Is there anyone who doesn’t use a spreadsheet? Around 75 per cent of UK businesses rely heavily on Microsoft Excel for tasks such as budgeting, forecasting and decision-making. In fact, 40 per cent of office workers’ time in the UK is spent using Excel, with many businesses depending on it for data analysis. Remarkably, over half of these users have never received formal training.
Excel has become an essential tool across almost every industry and is arguably the most powerful and successful form of self-service computing for rapid results.
But…
Spreadsheets aren’t without their flaws. A quick online search will yield thousands of stories about spreadsheet errors and high-profile Excel bloopers. While spreadsheets play a vital role in businesses, it’s still worrying to see so many organisations using them for unsuitable purposes.
In social housing, with large volumes of critical data (not least in relation to compliance and tenants’ health & safety), there are inherent process, audit, accuracy and security risks in using spreadsheets to meet the data-processing standards needed for compliance and tenants’ data.
The problems with Excel
The problems with spreadsheets aren’t related to the software itself but how it’s adapted and used in specific contexts. In sectors such as social housing, relying on spreadsheets for managing regulatory compliance or property conditions can be extremely risky.
Location, location, location…
Where are your spreadsheets stored? In many organisations, spreadsheets have proliferated across teams, often with multiple versions in circulation. The results? Fragmented and hard-to-control environments with no clear record of who has or had access to what data (and who has time to police such a thing?).
Even if there’s centralised storage (via SharePoint, for example), users can still create their own versions, creating chaos with multiple and often conflicting data sets.
Access, control & data protection
With increasing scrutiny over data protection and GDPR compliance, spreadsheets often fall short. While passwords offer some security, they lack the robust access controls provided by specialised software solutions. With spreadsheets, anyone can access sensitive data, creating significant risks to both personal and organisational information.
Errors, errors, errors…
One of the biggest dangers of using spreadsheets is human error. We’ve all made mistakes, whether it’s accidentally deleting a cell or overwriting critical data. As spreadsheets grow more complex, with advanced formulas and interconnected workbooks, errors can snowball (that no one has the time or capacity to investigate), leading to faulty conclusions and potentially catastrophic decisions.
Ultimately, without proper traceability, it’s difficult to pinpoint where things went wrong and who’s accountable.
Reporting challenges
Anyone with final responsibility for reporting knows the frustrations of having to collate multiple spreadsheets, understand their context and have confidence in the information they are reporting, let alone the time it takes to generate sensible outputs from multiple sources.
At the most basic level, each data/reporting source will probably have its own asset/property register (and they’re also likely to differ from each other and/or be out of date), and who knows what intangible ‘filters’ users have applied when creating their spreadsheets in the first place?
Anyone who has attempted to showcase thorough management processes, supported by data and evidence-based reports, to an auditor or senior management is likely to have struggled when faced with even the simplest questions
Why do people still use unsuitable spreadsheets?
The short answer is because they already know how. Nearly everyone in an office setting has a basic understanding of Excel, with many of us relying on the ‘Excel guru’ in our network when we need help with more advanced tasks. And Excel’s power and flexibility have made it an enduring tool over the years.
The bottom line
While spreadsheets are an integral tool in virtually every business, and as capable and familiar for many users as Excel is, they will never provide the efficiency, data accuracy, validation capability, auditability or confidence in outputs that the right software solution will provide.
Asprey’s clients, many of whom previously relied on multiple spreadsheets and contractor portals, have found that cloud-based asset and compliance management solutions drastically reduce administrative burdens and improve data management. By consolidating planning, management and reporting into a single solution, we make it easier to maintain clean, accurate data and ensure transparency across all property-related activities.
While spreadsheets will always have a place in business, they simply aren’t suitable for managing the condition and safety of social housing properties. They can offer rapid solutions for the complex manipulation of large datasets (albeit only temporarily, but some information is better than none), which is why they proliferate, but they are rarely future-proof when longer-term solutions demand more rigorous validation, robustness and data security.
Rachel Ratty is the sales and marketing director at Asprey Management Solutions.
