Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
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Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#2Yes - Excel is deeply embedded in actuarial modelling.
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#3Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files, why else would someone be compelled to stick with Excel?
Seems like the rest of the tabular data stuff could be done in Google Sheets or some other product and yield the same results.
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#4Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files, why else would someone be compelled to stick with Excel? Seems like the rest of the tabular data stuff could be done in Google Sheets or some other product and yield the same results.
Google Sheets kinda sucks performance-wise though
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#5Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files, why else would someone be compelled to stick with Excel? Seems like the rest of the tabular data stuff could be done in Google Sheets or some other product and yield the same results.
It's on everyone's computer in the office, and doesn't require internet or training outside of your non-tech specialty.
Also, there's a TON of .xlsx files in the wild with years of business knowledge and processing. Everyone uses about the same 50% or so of Excel, which is captured in Google Sheets and any other spreadsheet. It's the extra 20% that everyone else uses -- and it's a different 20% for everyone -- that causes the issue of entrenchment.
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#6Yes - Excel is deeply embedded in actuarial modelling.
Modeling yes, which makes sense given that it's a tabular math tool.
Using it to handle all the pricing structure for a few thousand clients on the other hand is another issue by having underwriters plug in values that they got from an online application, though, not so much.
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#7Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files, why else would someone be compelled to stick with Excel? Seems like the rest of the tabular data stuff could be done in Google Sheets or some other product and yield the same results.
People are wedded to Excel because they've spent a lot of time learning it and don't want their skills to become obsolete.
The resistance is rooted in psychological / political reasons, not technical ones.
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#8Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files, why else would someone be compelled to stick with Excel? Seems like the rest of the tabular data stuff could be done in Google Sheets or some other product and yield the same results.
> Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files
Those things. I literally run and pay for Parallels on my Mac for the Windows version of Excel. (Mostly for the keyboard shortcuts.)
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#9Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files, why else would someone be compelled to stick with Excel? Seems like the rest of the tabular data stuff could be done in Google Sheets or some other product and yield the same results.
That's a pretty big aside. Like big enough to be a valid reason in and of itself. The other part is performance and interface lag which still tends to be an issue on any reasonable amount of data.
Re: Finance Pros Say You’ll Have to Pry Excel Out of Their Cold, Dead Hands
#10Aside from macros, keyboard shortcuts, and .xlsx files, why else would someone be compelled to stick with Excel? Seems like the rest of the tabular data stuff could be done in Google Sheets or some other product and yield the same results.
Why use VIM, emacs or Sublime Text, when some online cloud coding platform can probably do the same thing?
In addition to the things you mentioned, Excel is an offline, native app, with much more speed and efficiency when dealing with complex or large spreadsheets, IMO.