Pros and cons of spreadsheets and business software

1. Webinar: Escape From Spreadsheet Hell
Date: March 1st, 2011 9:30am
Presenter: Scott Long – President, Long Business Systems, Inc.
Agenda
• Advantages of Spreadsheets
• Disadvantages of Spreadsheets
• Value of an Integrated Enterprise Database
• Reporting Options with an Enterprise Database
• Best of Both Worlds: Spreadsheets & Enterprise Databases
• Summary

2. Advantages of Spreadsheets
o
o You can do it yourself
o On demand when you need it
o Formatted and displayed they way you want or need it
o Can work on them at the office, home or while travelling
o Simple, powerful and everyone understands the technology

3. Disadvantages of Spreadsheets
o
o You have to do it - or -
o Pay someone else to do it, then you have to spec it out and coordinate
o Time spent importing or manually updating the data, which affects the time it
takes to produce it and the time it becomes obsolete or out of date.
o Security, Multi-User Access, Audit Log of Changes, Folder/File Access
o Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, depends on the auditor
o Finding the correct source of the data, that is verified to be identical to the
“truth”. Such as the general ledger, sales reports, a/r, a/p & inventory
valuations

4. Disadvantages of Spreadsheets
Example: Sales
o It sounds easy, but coming up with a sales dollar amount can be very
challenging
o It needs to match the G/L, by Customer, hip To, Item, Summary vs. Detail,
Invoices, Credit Memos, Sales Tax Reports, Date Range
o Challenges:
- Drop Ship To Address
- Customer Changes (out of business, acquisitions)
- Item changes (obsolete/replacement)
- Credit memos (full or partial, freight only, sales tax)
- Summary vs. Detail, depending on how data is stored in the business system database
- Database tables: invoice headers, invoice lines, credit memo headers, credit memo lines

5. Value of an Integrated Enterprise Database
o
o Central depository for the businesses data: G/L and Transactions
o No, or very little, duplicate information
o Timeliness of data: As transactions occur
o Secure, Authorization Control, Backups
o The source of the “single version of the truth”
o Validate all reports, queries and extracts to this data
o Can create routines that are stored and called when needed for reporting
(single version of the truth that is verifiable)

6. Reporting Options with an Enterprise Database
o
o Reports from the business management software itself
o Most newer software packages have:
- Include many reports, with ways to change the formats for display
- Ways to extract data
- Tools to create your own reports and queries, using the correct data source
- Drag & Relate type functionality
- Dashboards and Cockpits

7. Best of Both Worlds: Spreadsheets & Enterprise
Databases
o
o Produce standard or reoccurring reports out of the enterprise database using
the tools that are included in the software
o When needed, export these standard reports to excel for further analysis,
reporting or presentation.
o Able to quickly prove the source by matching your excel data to the enterprise
system reports and data.

8. Escape From Spreadsheet Hell
Summary
o Excel is a powerful tool
o Make sure the source of data is accurate and verifiable
o Don’t spend time re-entering data into excel
o Don’t make excel the master source of data

9. Escape From Spreadsheet Hell
Questions and Answers