Excel vs a Dashboard for Reporting

Lots of us use Excel reporting; it’s fast, flexible and best of all just about everyone can use it to some degree.

But with flexibility comes danger, it’s easy to get bogged down in complex formulas, lookups, incorrect cell references, mis-sorting etc.. Once a complex spreadsheet has been created, the only person that can understand is it the author. Potentially dangerous.

Using Excel to manipulate even small amounts of data can result in compound errors and inconsistencies. It’s so hard to diagnose and debug, too.

Do senior managers know how much time goes into creating the reporting they rely on every day? In many organisations there are people spending days (and nights) just compiling reports. And just how accurate are they??

We’ve seen many examples where a spreadsheet has been overwritten, with formulas changed, resulting in incorrect reporting from then on.

The errors compound themselves over time, as the author goes on holiday for two weeks and some poor sole takes on the task of producing the 'Daily Report', only to make it work by tweaking the figures. From then on the report is irretrievably flawed.

How many companies base their on-going business decision making on flawed spreadsheets?

When it comes to accessible reporting, spreadsheets are not ideal. Bulky attachments. Where is the most up to date version? Can you view it on your phone or tablet?

Dashboards provide a more robust and professional way of reporting. For everyone, on every device. Because they take source data, the results are always reliable and accurate and consistent. There’s no human intervention, no cells to overwrite, no lookups to change. Nice and simple.

Oh, and they can free up your battle weary reporting team to get on with more important stuff. For more information on Digi dashboards, visit digi-products.com/kpi or call us on 0203 1379 199 today.