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Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

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Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#371

Post by jstandard »

sheetjs wrote: post #293
jstandard wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Excel is an incredible swiss army knife when dealing with one person in one location on one computer, but the warts start showing up when any of those assumptions break. One computer: once you decide you want to use your smartphone, for all but the most basic sheets there are problems with Excel mobile preview, even with Microsoft's official apps. One location: Excel's lack of a universal time (showing different time…

I hear you. I think One Computer and One Person issues have generally been solved by Office Online or Google Spreadsheets. I can't speak to difficulty around lack of universal time nor do I know how important of a requirement that is to most companies.

Any solution, SaaS or otherwise, will have flaws. It might solve Excel's weaknesses really well, but will likely lack its strengths.

Excel is still going strong in 2017 to a large degree because its strengths continue outweigh its weaknesses and that people have found reasonable ways, or add-on tools, to work around it's weaknesses.

It will be interesting to see in the coming decade if niche industry solutions or an even more incredible swiss army knife were to come around and dethrone the incumbent.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#372

Post by taeric »

forapurpose wrote: post #350
njharman wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users able to modify cod is the opensource model. It doesn't lose its benefits and advantages just because the users are not us(professional devs)

That's not a realistic comparison. I have yet to see one user try to modify Firefox's code. Spreadsheets, on the other hand ...

You are still making a distinction between user and developer. I think the point is that we can all be both.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#373

Post by fivre »

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…

http://bad.solutions is one of my favorite providers of Enterprise-grade software that is not remotely usable.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#374

Post by mr_toad »

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…

Every excel spreadsheet is an error waiting to happen.

Implicit & unexplained business rules, no tests, no version control, unlabeled cell references, hardwired variables, everything is global, no encapsulation, no logs and no documentation.

Even assembly code is easier read and maintain than a complicated excel workbook.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#375

Post by [deleted] »

jstandard wrote: post #371
sheetjs wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excel is an incredible swiss army knife when dealing with one person in one location on one computer, but the warts start showing up when any of those assumptions break. One computer: once you decide you want to use your smartphone, for all but the most basic sheets there are problems with Excel mobile preview, even with Microsoft's official apps. One location: Excel's lack of a universal time (showing different time…

I hear you. I think One Computer and One Person issues have generally been solved by Office Online or Google Spreadsheets. I can't speak to difficulty around lack of universal time nor do I know how important of a requirement that is to most companies. Any solution, SaaS or otherwise, will have flaws. It might solve Excel's weaknesses really well, but will likely lack its strengths. Excel is still going strong in 201…

[deleted]

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#376

Post by [deleted] »

skinnymuch wrote: post #364
sheetjs wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excel is an incredible swiss army knife when dealing with one person in one location on one computer, but the warts start showing up when any of those assumptions break. One computer: once you decide you want to use your smartphone, for all but the most basic sheets there are problems with Excel mobile preview, even with Microsoft's official apps. One location: Excel's lack of a universal time (showing different time…

What's with all talk wrt Office 365 and web versions and syncing that goes on with that? Is none of that actually the case? I wouldn't be surprised, just don't know.

[deleted]

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#377

Post by _diyu »

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…

> few of the people using it realize they're programming

An idea I've been toying with for a few months now is an automation app (read: window manager) whose UI is somewhere between Excel and GameMaker Studio's drag & drop UI. Like where you just have a giant grid/canvas, and where you can define "routines" and "variables" as groups of cells. If I could figure it out, I think it would open up the idea of an automation app to a broader scope, to people who aren't programmers, and I might be able to make some money off it. Especially considering I made like $500 in donations for Hydra back when I was doing more WM stuff for Mac, so there seems to be some excitement for the idea of programming your Mac, but perhaps it could be a living if I can figure out how to reach out to power users who aren't programmers. And it was your comment that gave me the idea of making it more like a grid instead of more like GameMaker. So, thanks!

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#378

Post by patio11 »

Pamar wrote: post #308
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. Really? I am working in company which is not handling super-sensitive data (i.e. not a Bank, for example) but I can assure you that if went around proposing to adopt a SAAS for what Excel is used internally I would not get very far. No matter how good you are as a SAAS provider, our data stay in-house. End of sto…

Many people on HN make the jump from "I would not buy that" to "There is not a market for that", but there is, in fact, a market for SaaSifying lots of things.

It's no value judgement if you want to continue using Excel for privacy, compliance, or security reasons. You do you. But SaaS companies get very good at developing privacy, compliance, and security stories, particularly as they move into enterprise. (Below enterprise it's less of a big deal, partially because customers care about them less and partially because small businesses are, as a judgement-free statement of engineering reality, abominably bad at data security.)

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#379

Post by jujaro »

Some time ago Telco carriers used to keep their plant assets data in Excel, PDF, Autocad, images, paper etc. I work for a company that does software to centralize all that info in a database. Once they start using the software the big issue is that they want to keep different versions of the same data all centralized. Sort of a version control system, the complexity of maintaining data integrity in such environment is massive. It is like they would like to return to a decentralized system where they can do whatever they want with their data.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#380

Post by R_haterade »

thinkling wrote: post #279
R_haterade wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>its simply not as useful for adhoc data analysis and reporting. You wanna know what's even more useful? Code notebooks. I store everything from my sql queries to my processing pipeline to my models, and my vizualizations. Most notebooks have slide-show modes now so your presentation to business stakeholders is simple to prepare as well, and with the right plotting packages you can draw interactive charts that do all…

Most business analysts who are pulling this kind of data have a finance background. To say that they're "too lazy" because they don't want to do their work using Python seems a bit harsh. In practice what I've seen is that IT and finance departments don't even let business analysts write their own SQL queries for fear that they'll write bad ones that bring the database server to its knees.

>In practice what I've seen is that IT and finance departments don't even let business analysts write their own SQL queries for fear that they'll write bad ones that bring the database server to its knees

I'll take data warehouses for 600, Alex.

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