Note: This is a new series in which I'll be discussing the pros and cons of using spreadsheet tools for performance management. See the intro/background post.
Part 2: Pros – Excel is everywhere and it's easy.
The first thing Excel has got going for it is that it’s everywhere. Travel to five different countries and you probably can’t plug in your hair dryer without a set of adapters but most likely you can give an .xls file to a business person and they can open it. It's easy to share files containing data, analysis, and reporting with co-workers, clients, government, and the public.
And since it’s everywhere, most people have at least a basic understanding of how Excel works. If I need to collect some data and I email you a spreadsheet to fill out and return, you can probably quickly figure out what you need to do. If I need to search for historical data, there is likely a directory on some file server that has a lot of spreadsheets containing the data I need.
When I find the data I need, it is really easy to cut and paste it from one spreadsheet to another. It’s not all that much more difficult to link the data from one workbook to another either. It’s easy to format my spreadsheet and even to insert simple charts.
In fact, one person can set up a fairly sophisticated spreadsheet to monitor the performance of a large (or a small or medium) sized organization. I’ve seen lots of multi-billion dollar companies that have a top-level Excel spreadsheet that measures the overall (not just financial) performance of an organization.
I’d say 80%-90% of performance management implementations rely on Excel for these very reasons: it’s easy to use, it’s everywhere, and it’s the standard. We’ll look at some more of Excel’s advantages next time.
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