When I first started in a management information role, I was bombarded with multiple requests for single pieces of MI from all and sundry. Mostly, I would write the results as short reports. For a short time, I received a great deal of largely unwarranted scrutiny. Then I decided to change my approach and instead of pasting results into documents, I pasted the results into excel spreadsheets. The scrutiny dropped rapidly.
Am I the only person to notice this apparent disbelief of everything that is not on excel? I can't think this is an isolated part of business culture.
Which brings me to another excel phenomenon - the 'spread mart'. Why build a business-critical data mart in a secure environment, with failover, disaster recovery and data quality feedback, when you can simply build a spreadsheet?
It constantly surprises me that business critical operations can be stored almost entirely in excel. Are you addicted? Get a cure before it's too late!
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