Thursday, June 16, 2016

Avoid the Spreadsheet Trap

Spreadsheet programs like Microsoft’s Excel are excellent tools for comparing options and analyzing data. Many small businesses use them instead of more expensive applications for financial, inventory or customer management.
But beware: Using a spreadsheet in place of a more specialized program can hold your data hostage. The appeal of a spreadsheet’s wide-open capabilities is also its downfall.

Let’s take a hypothetical scenario to demonstrate the slippery slope.
At first we start with simple list data like customer name, email, phone, address, products purchased and total sales. Add in a summation formula for total customers and revenue.
We need some standardization. Turn the products-purchased field from free-form entry into a drop-down list. The sales team likes it but wants the customers classified by region and their total revenue broken out by each product category purchased. Add a region field, populate the regional data and do a “sum if” statement to calculate revenue by category.
Is this starting to sound familiar? Read this article in it's entirety at Sacramento Business Journal >>>