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Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

wsj.com

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Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#131

Post by bjoerns »

bitwisebob wrote: post #108

While we're talking about Excel: Are there any good tools available for version control and/or diffing of spreadsheets? If my coworker updates a formula in cell E3 and emails it to be, is there any way for me to know what changed?

We (disclaimer: I'm the co-founder) have developed a Git-based add-on for Excel workbooks. Basically, it starts where Git left off in the Excel world. Here's a short blog post how it works out for one of our open source projects: https://www.xltrail.com/blog/xlwings-is-now-on-xltrail

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#132

Post by carrier_lost »

chatmasta wrote: post #8

How much does it cost to get an advertisement like this in the WSJ?

Article mentions companies by name: "This is just an advertisement! Shill journalism!"

Article doesn't mention companies by name: "The reporter didn't include any specifics! Lazy journalism!"

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#133

Post by phkahler »

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…

MS access is often a way better tool for what people do. The problem is that it requires a bit more work up front, a little more abstraction, and usually some programming. Having said that, most companies have people in IT that can help out something like that together for people but that's not their job.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#134

Post by R_haterade »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #5

The core complaint of not having a single source of truth seems more about how the company handles data/filing rather than Excel itself. Maybe I'm a bit bias having used Excel my entire career and very dependent on it, but everytime I've seen companies steer away from the desktop application with 0365/sheets/tableau its simply not as useful for adhoc data analysis and reporting.

>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 the fancy stuff. And when it's time to update the analysis, you just re-run the notebook.

But business analysts are too freaking lazy to just learn to write some python or R, and they're perfectly happy to get paid to do the same task over and over again when it comes time to making updates.

And don't get me started on source control.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#135

Post by fzumstein »

oblio wrote: post #75
dalbasal wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are upsides to excel in cases like that… The health insurance people of various sorts who use this setup are the ones with domain knowledge. With an excel program, they can (1) understand how it works (2) add to it, modify it (3) create a copy and break it (4) debug it (5) have ideas about how it could work differently… I’m not saying that excel is the tool for the job (sounds like it is definitely not), and th…

On top of what you're saying, the alternative is frequently a heap of under specified, under tested (and only manually tested!), copy-pasted and shoddy quality Cobol/Java/Oracle/C#/SQLServer/PHP/MySQL code. Yes, the performance will generally be better (1 minute to run a report, not 1 hour), but I'm not sure things will generally be better. As you said, the business people can at least modify the Excel. These systems…

I agree, the issue is not Excel as such but how it's being handled: I once wrote a blog post on how you can unit test Excel spreadsheets, too: https://www.zoomeranalytics.com/blog/unittests-for-microsoft...

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#136

Post by toyg »

phkahler wrote: post #133
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…

MS access is often a way better tool for what people do. The problem is that it requires a bit more work up front, a little more abstraction, and usually some programming. Having said that, most companies have people in IT that can help out something like that together for people but that's not their job.

> it requires a bit more work up front

Because of this "bit more work", it's also much less flexible in the long run.

Excel is not a great database, but it's a highly flexible one.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#137

Post by 52-6F-62 »

petilon wrote: post #109
gaius wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the centralized systems with even the slickest web GUIs can match Excel's capabilities. You can very easily use Excel as a client to a central database and get the best of both worlds.

Actually you run into the one of Excel's biggest problems when you do this, namely "Multiple versions of the truth". Here's how that happens: The central database often contains bad data. Users "fix" the bad data in their spreadsheet. Excel doesn't have the ability to write the updated data back to the database. Now everyone has their own versions of "the truth". There are products that attempt to solve this problem…

My first question was going to follow the poster above, and you answered it for me. I didn't realize Excel couldn't write back to the database. It shouldn't be too hard to develop an extension for that purpose, would it?

Aside from that — what about MS cloud services? I mean, maybe that's not appropriate for healthcare or certain businesses, but for others it allows there to be a single source of truth if the workflow is correctly tuned, no? I can produce a doc in my local instace, push to 365, edit remotely on the web, have somebody else edit remotely, and sync it back to my local instance without a hitch.

I use Office365 for that purpose regularly at my job. I'm a developer, but I have regular communication with editors, producers, project managers, division managers, operations managers, art directors, and so on. A lot of the information we share is tabled and needs to stay updated, and editable by each party involved. It's worked well for me in that regard.

Maybe others have had different experiences?

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#138

Post by [deleted] »

phkahler wrote: post #133
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…

MS access is often a way better tool for what people do. The problem is that it requires a bit more work up front, a little more abstraction, and usually some programming. Having said that, most companies have people in IT that can help out something like that together for people but that's not their job.

[deleted]

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#139

Post by ataturk »

GiorgioG wrote: post #37
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…

When I consulted at a health insurance company (a Blue Cross Blue Shield licensee with 1000 employees, 200 IT staff) about 10 years ago, I was absolutely horrified that the system of record for health care plan data was Excel spreadsheets. They had staff who would update the claims processing system based on thousands of spreadsheets. When you called customer service, the CSR app would auto-open the member's plan inf…

I worked at a major PBM and saw the same thing--stupid mess of Excel spreadsheets and Access databases. Major systems still on AS/400 with file drop off as the mechanism for communications instead of queues. Oh and one major system still running on a DEC Alpha OpenVMS system that required replacement hardware purchases on the gray market used equipment side.

Re: Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

#140

Post by rattray »

gjjrfcbugxbhf wrote: post #92
GiorgioG wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The alternative is often rough. Software projects like this have high failure rates. Getting “requirements” out of users’/clients’ heads and into programmer’s is difficult. It means the standard (natural?) gap between domain knowledge and programming knowledge is restored. That has costs. The alternative doesn't have to have a high failure rate. I was brought in to help reboot their in-house implementation of a pro…

Alternatively you misunderstood the business requirements and would have cost then a fortune on a failed project. Alternatively you were brought in by management to make cost cutting recommendations - and your solution wasn't cheap enough. Alternatively the company accounted for the enormous risk of the project succeeding but actually being worse than what they had in place. You really don't know the politics of this…

I upvoted your post because I think those alternatives are interesting to consider, but _you_ know far less about the politics of the situation than the OP.

It's entirely possible that the OP was exactly correct, or close to correct. It's also quite likely that at least one of the factors you mentioned (or others) was also at play.

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