Thomas OtterMy blogging mojo had left the building for a while, but for better or worse it returned today.
When I speak to enterprise software vendors they often moan about Excel. They say it is not secure, and that most spreadsheets contain errors. They preach about the dangers of information silos, of decisions made on old and inaccurate data, the hours wasted in uploads, downloads and reconciliation and formulae creation. They are of course right.
They are at a loss to understand why well-rounded, upstanding members of society, who pay their taxes, are loving but firm parents, drive assertively yet safely with their seatbelts fastened, and have decent golf handicaps let down by poor bunker play would chose to spend hours in Excel rather than use the vendor’s application to do a much better job for that particular process.
They then mutter and twitch or rant and foam about Excel hell.
To Enterprise software makers, my plea.
Excel hell is not an evil Microsoft plot, or some sort of madness that descends upon otherwise sane managers and knowledge workers when they open the PC. It is the fault of enterprise software failing to provide an alternative.
Most of the users who use your software for a significant part of their day do so because they have to if they want to get paid: accounts payable experts, call centre agents, payroll administrators and returns clerks, for instance. They can’t get up in the morning and say, “Today, I’ll use Lawson or Oracle, because I didn’t really like the feel of the SAP application I used to process those invoices yesterday.” Admin users are in an arranged marriage. On some rare occasions, love blossoms, especially in the payroll department. Most of the time though, they seethe with quiet loathing.
Most employees in an organization are voluntary users for the vast majority of processes. They don’t have to log onto the employee skills dashboard every week to check if their team is on track for their development goals. If once a year they log on to the HR application, complete the appraisals as fast as they can, and get out of there, they will. Many top sales people spend as little time as they possibility can in CRM systems. Many poor salespeople spend considerable time logged onto CRM applications.
Now you can draw up long valid lists of reasons why enterprise applications are better for business processes than Excel (an ideal use for Excel). You can deliver fire and brimstone warnings about the damnation that is Excel hell (use Facebook to attract others to your cause).
Or you can ask yourself some hard questions about your own design thinking.
If you expect managers and knowledge workers to do serious value added work with your applications, rather than filling in the mandatory fields in travel expenses and fleeing back to email, then it is from the likes of Excel and Facebook that you must learn. Excel entices with simplicity for beginners and powerful freedom for experts. Facebook squeezes every drop out of the human desire to share and tell.
Neither application assumes just because you are a “user” that you will use the application. When was the last time you had an enterprise application go viral?
I’m not disputing the need for standardised, disciplined processes. Heck, I have marched to that process drum most of my work life. But if enterprise applications want to really impact productivity, innovation and agility and do all that step changing, paradigm shifting, goalpost moving, blue oceaning stuff then yet more “process efficiency” is not the answer.
When you log onto the enterprise applications in your own organisation, do you actually like using them? Have they helped you innovate? Can you you obey the 8th scout law while using them?
Or do you have a secret excel with all the really cool stuff in? And are you sure you didn’t forward a spreadsheet onto your sales team to fill in about the q4 pipeline, because you knew that it would take weeks to get it out of your CRM system?
When was the last time you fired up the enterprise application in a meeting and looked at the real numbers on the big screen?
You may think your competition is a venerable but still packs a punch ERP vendor, and that darling of wallstreet oh-so-smug SaaS vendor, and several stealth but pedigree VC cloud virtual collaboration hypercool outfits. Yes, but…..
stop, step away from the cookie jar.
Call in the design thinking team. Create a design persona with competent Excel skills.
Add another column to your product planning strategy budget spreadsheet (I know that you are your product budget planning in a spreadsheet, rather than in that New Product Development Planning and Introduction Application you have). Add the following formula, please.
Category: software design Tags: excel; software design; ERP; shelfware; users
9 responses so far ↓
1 uberVU - social comments February 27, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by vendorprisey: First blog post in a while. http://bit.ly/aGj628 On Excel….
2 Andy Scherer February 27, 2010 at 9:03 pm
Clearly and passionately stated, Thomas. You’ve got your mojo workin’.
3 BIAIB :: Uncategorized :: Excel Hell February 27, 2010 at 10:18 pm
[...] un’azienda. Leggo poco fa un articolo di un consulente Gartner, Thomas Otter, che si chiede chi sia da incolpare per l’inferno di spreadsheet che così spesso viene a generarsi in azienda. Essi si [...]
4 Tom Benson February 28, 2010 at 1:44 am
Thomas,
This post fits nicely with the Jan 27 post considering how a BI app would operate if it were designed by Apple….
It’s an interesing. What would an ERP suite look like if it were designed for the iPad *from the start* and pointedly ignored the 50-year old mainframe/transactional/relational model that all current ERP software is based on?
If Gartner decides to hold a conference, sponsor a brainstorming session, or write a study on *this* topic, I’d be the first to subscribe.
5 Yoav March 1, 2010 at 5:22 am
Hi Thomas,
This post was right to the point. I run a software company that sells PDF to Excel conversion software and information workers from all of the fortune 100 buy from us. They do it behind the IT’s back because ‘It’s against company policy to extract data directly from PDF reports’… ‘That’s why we have BI systems anyone can use’.
6 Eric Perry March 1, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Hi Thomas – Great post! Sometimes a spreadsheet IS the right tool. So, why not put the right controls in place so that users can continue spreadsheet use, but in such a way that mitigates the risk of errors, mistatements, and fraud? (rhetorical question)
7 Julian Schwarzenbach March 2, 2010 at 5:23 am
Thomas,
Excellent post which matches one of my long running ‘hot topics’.
Excel can be both a blessing and a curse – it can be a very powerful tool for undertaking analytics on the fly (so long as there are suitable controls and that you are not repeating analysis that can be done within the core application). However, sometimes, this analysis can appear too easy resulting in staff attempting analysis where they don’t fully understand how to ensure Excel provides the correct answer. If organisations provide a quick and effective analysis service, then users are less likely to adopt a ‘DIY’ approach.
The curse of Excel can also arise from this simplicity – users can be tempted to keep their analysis and then update the data within it as business circumstances change. This, in effect, creates a pirate/rogue application keeping data outside the core company system.
In the transport and utilities world I have come across countless instances of staff not trusting the corporate data, creating their own version in Excel/Access. When they move role, the new manager may not be happy with the corporate data, not trust their predecessors tool and then create their own version. This tends to lead to 3 or more conflicting versions of the truth!
The challenge for organisations is to ensure these changing information demands are visible and addressed in a controlled way. Over-bureacratic IS/IM departments making it too ‘difficult’ for users to address such legitimate business needs tend to encourage and maintain this culture of user developed solutions.
Organsiations should try to ensure that users are constructive critics, this means you know the problem areas and can engage in communication on how to adress problems and new needs.
8 Is Excel the Bane of Our Existance? « Delusions of Adequacy March 8, 2010 at 2:58 pm
[...] Gartner of all companies sums it up: [...]
9 William J McKibbin April 16, 2010 at 5:21 pm
I have my career around Excel. I started with VisiCalc back in the early eighties, moved on to Lotus 1-2-3 in the mid eighties, and then to Excel in the mid-nineties. My entire professional practice centers on using Excel to solve problems in enterprise. I will admit that the version of Excel on my computer is “souped-up” with stochastic modeling capabilities (http://www.mckibbinusa.com/software.html), but the basic application is still Excel. Thanks for writing this article which I will cite in my blog soon. My latest support piece for Excel users can be read below:
http://wjmc.blogspot.com/2010/04/excel-in-future.html
Thanks for the opportunity to comment and regards to all…