The ever dreaded spreadsheet. Even though we hate them, they’re our go-to for sales management processes. In a recent survey conducted by Daptiv, it was revealed that 76% of IT organizations still rely on spreadsheets for critical decision-making purposes. At Volano, we’re all about helping organizations improve their processes; so we’re going to tell you why we think spreadsheets are actually the worst.

1. They take forever. It stands to reason if you’re using a spreadsheet to track compensations, competencies and professional development, you’re probably spending a lot of time finding and filing all of that information as well; manually entering all that information might as well double your workload, leaving less time for the the things that matter – engaging with, educating and retaining your clients as well as your team…oh yeah, and using that data.

2. Mistakes… mistakes everywhere. With all that manual entry involved in creating a spreadsheet, mistakes are bound to happen. Afterall, we’re only human, right? As your business grows, this problem is only going to grow. By ditching the spreadsheet and switching to a custom software program, you can also ditch all that human error. Spreadsheets also provide very limited insights into data (data that may have been entered incorrectly with one flawed keystroke) and because of that, they definitely should not be used as the foundation for significant business decisions.

3. It is hard to develop accurate spreadsheet models. With a custom software program, you can rest assured knowing you’re getting a software that has had extensive time invested in developing agile methodologies, frameworks and tools to improve the quality of your project management tool. Whereas with spreadsheets, you simply do not get this as there has been minimal work in improving spreadsheet modeling, leaving much to be desired from the spreadsheet user.

4. You can’t integrate performance with development. Professional performance and development are two things that should work in tandem. Because spreadsheets are very one dimensional in nature, it can be difficult to create a spreadsheet where you can plan all your requirements and tasks and allocate resources. Doing all this in a spreadsheet makes for awful collaboration, making it tough for everyone on the team to have the latest version of the plan while making sure prioritized tasks are being worked on; impeding performance and development. Basically, there’s zero transparency; no one knows where any one person is at in a project. The same people that use spreadsheets as a project management tool are probably the same people that keep asking, “Where are we with that?”.

5. They don’t allow for growth. Like we’ve mentioned, if you think you’re spending a lot of time manually entering information into spreadsheets, imagine the paperwork you’ll have when your company really starts growing. The right custom software will ensure you can manage more employees and projects and efficiently, something spreadsheets just aren’t cut out to do. Simply put, spreadsheets do not make work flow.

With our custom software, we bring together proven practices and technical expertise with your specific challenges and goals to improve how work flows through every area of your business. Our all-encompassing approach connects marketing to sales to operations to accounting, and to any other department within your organization; something that spreadsheets simply cannot do.