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Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

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Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#231

Post by yeukhon »

I used to be in the camp “oh you know Excel and PowerPoint, ahah!”

But working full time and having to create Excel spreadhseets on a regular basis as an engineer (mainly for budgeting and capacity plannig, but also do some schedule/timeline display), I have to say once you know how to cross reference things in Excel, life saver...

Automating spreadsheet creation has helped save hours of manual recompiling every quarter (do this Python is pretty pleasant). Yes. The scrolling and wrapping really sucks, but nonetheless everyone understands excels. I have been given tours and free trials from SaaS companies to try their AWS budgeting interface. They are great for some (like some prettt graph), but just not easy and flexible at all.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#232

Post by Parcissons »

jstandard wrote: post #216
sheetjs wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my career in business software has still mostly been about converting spreadsheets into more "proper" applications. Still true for many people in 2017. @patio11 probably said it best: > Every spreadsheet shared in a business is an angel announcing another SaaS app still needs to be built. https://twitter.com/patio11/status/655674551615942657 FWIW we ended up in business software after one of our open source librari…

> Every spreadsheet shared in a business is an angel announcing another SaaS app still needs to be built. It's a pithy quote, you'll get a very different reaction from a finance or small to med-sized business professional. Excel is the ultimate maker studio that actually lives up to the promise of "build your own mini-app". I'm not saying it can't be improved on. It's just that the core model of flexibility is so com…

Makes me wonder, why microsoft never added a "publish excell sheet as app" for the windows store.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#233

Post by njarboe »

barrkel wrote: post #212
fjsolwmv wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. An domain-specific SaaS app takes all the power away from the people writing their spreadsheet programs. Only one app is needed, a hosted spreadsheet with backup and versioning an replication. The only domain-specific business is in writing plugins.

There's a reason chefs don't use multi-tools; purpose-built tools always beat generic tools when you need to maximize efficiency on a task.

I would say a chef's knife is the ultimate kitchen multi-tool. Having one great knife you really know how to use for cutting everything is much more efficient than a bunch of different knives.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#234

Post by deusofnull »

Sounds like their workflow is the problem, not their tool. I'm no shill for Excel, but it is without a doubt powerful and can be quite programmatic. Maybe Excel could get a plugin system like Atom or VS Code or Sublime that could handle integration with centralized platforms / databases.

Just wondering: can you make an API call / ORM query to a database from within Excel macros? How much I/O can you do with macros?

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#235

Post by smallnamespace »

Have seen Excel derivatives pricers that ran long Monte Carlo simulations (yes, RAND() is often good enough) that took several minutes -- press F9 for a new estimate of a price, as well as simplified stripped-down pricers that got within 0.001% of our real internal pricing system but was nicely laid out and explainable to clients.

The only thing that Excel is awkward at is unlimited recursion. For everything else, if you can't turn your computation into a nicely laid-out spreadsheet, then you probably don't understand your problem well enough to explain to others.

Had a fun time doing many of the Euler problems in Excel, even though they theoretically many require recursion. Oftentimes I got the answer more quickly and easily than in Python.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#236

Post by Nicholas_C »

b1daly wrote: post #99

I'm only use spreadsheets here and there., bit this article has the kind of grating stupidity that adds to the conceptual noise we are surrounded with. To replace Excel with software X, you would have to deliver software that would provide the Same kind of flexibilty. That is a very difficult kind of software to develop! One very basic and powerful aspect of excel is simply the fluidity of the display. You can cram a…

I used to work for a finance department that tried to implement a fancy driver based tool to replace an endless amount of spreadsheets. We spent so many hours and I’m sure a lot of money on the software license and consultants who built it and in the end it just wasn’t flexible enough.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#237

Post by com2kid »

bognition wrote: post #153
mabbo wrote: post #18

I would argue that the most commonly used programming language is Excel. But few of the people using it realize they're programming. It's a brilliant reactive data programming model that makes intuitive sense to non-technical users. They feel empowered to use it to solve problems right now with a computer. They experiment with it, try things, Google how to do more things- just like any programmer does. And they feel…

The issue isn't that you can't program in excel the issue is that excel lacks many of the safeguards that have been built around programming in the last few years. Version control for excel is terrible at best. Code review is basically non-existent and how could it be when logic is split over several cells and variables are named $A17 or B23. I think the win with excel is its super simple interface, that said there i…

> variables are named $A17 or B23.

Excel lets you name tables, cell ranges, or individual cells. I have seen spreadsheets put together by people who take the time to do this, and they are remarkably readable!

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#239

Post by [deleted] »

sidcool wrote: post #228
mschuster91 wrote: post #221

This is NOT about "inefficiencies", "data security" or whatever. In big biz, the "finance chiefs" (or other persons with purchase authority) usually get pampered by vendors with expensive business trips or whatever... especially at the scales that require SAP or Oracle solutions. So this likely means: the CFOs bought some expensive software that promises to replace Excel without any due diligence, the staff looks at…

What's Accidenture?

[deleted]

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#240

Post by Sylos »

sidcool wrote: post #228
mschuster91 wrote: post #221

This is NOT about "inefficiencies", "data security" or whatever. In big biz, the "finance chiefs" (or other persons with purchase authority) usually get pampered by vendors with expensive business trips or whatever... especially at the scales that require SAP or Oracle solutions. So this likely means: the CFOs bought some expensive software that promises to replace Excel without any due diligence, the staff looks at…

What's Accidenture?

He probably means Accenture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accenture

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