Escape From Spreadsheet Hell
- 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or manually updating the data, which affects the time it takes to produce it and the time it becomes obsolete or out of date.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