Spreadsheets (Part 3 of 3) - You can't manage, what you can't measure!

One of the biggest problems that the clients we serve face is not being able to get the information they need to know out of their data.   This is a serious problem because you can’t manage, what you can’t measure.  They know that there is something wrong with a part of the business, but do not know the causes of the symptoms.  Often a large part of this is due to the running of complex business processes with spreadsheets. 

As we work with companies who are involved in a lot of project or asset management they run into two problems with getting data out of their spreadsheets: 1. It takes a lot of time; 2. It can be very hard to get the data you actually need.  

Let’s look at the first problem: Time.  I met a senior PM who spends two hours a week updating the pivot tables on a massive spreadsheet.  Now two hours a week might not sound like a lot, but that translates out to 100 hours per year.  So he spends two weeks of his year just updating the pivot tables in his spreadsheet – it might be just me, but that does not seem like a good use of time.  Another project manager I know spends about 5 hours a week updating her pivot tables.  Now that comes out to 250 hours per year or 1.5 months of work.  There are 4 more people at her company who do the same thing – which translates into half a years work just updating a spreadsheet– wow!

But the problem gets compounded when you talk to these individuals about the information that they are pulling out, or more accurately, the information that they cannot pull out.  How much did company X spend on phase II development work last year?  Sorry – I can’t give you a timely response.  Where are all the bottlenecks in the project that are causing delays?  Sorry again, no answer.  Spreadsheets are extremely tough to query off of even for the most experienced users, because, in the end, they were not meant for that purpose – that is the role of a database.

Now one of the reasons we use Quickbase is that it can get our clients the information they need.   If they track the information, we can query the information with easy to use reports.  And once you setup a report, it is always there with one click of a mouse, and always up-to-date – working with web-based information in real time is great.   What tasks are always overdue in your projects?  No problem.  How much did that customer spend last year? Easy.  It not only saves them time, but saves them money.  And what can they do with all the time they save?  They can manage the actual business, because they know what actually needs to be managed.  

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