Enough is Enough – No more Excel for corporate management
Excel has always been an integral part of the Microsoft family. It is ideal for data analysis, evaluations and calculations yet companies use it as tool for corporate management. The description of company goals, employee management and training management, everything finds its place in Excel spreadsheets. This misuse usually leads to confusingly long tables that cannot be properly assigned and traced. Nevertheless, companies choose Excel for their data management because they are familiar with the system. The more efficient solution is obvious. A tool which is precisley customized to the requirements of quality management.
Excel has approximately 500 functions but only a few are used in everyday life.
Excel is made for numbers - and only for numbers
Numbers and Excel get along very well, it only takes one mouse click to subtract, add or multiply them. This is quite practical for statistics and finance, but what about information that has little to do with numbers? For example, the tracking of training courses or weighing of risks and chances. Using Microsoft Excel for quality management often requires several manual procedures, inserting data into a desired format in one or more Excel files, merging or referencing related data, and updating. Because Excel tables can grow to any size, there is a risk of documenting more information than necessary. This leads to increased confusion, which makes work more difficult and increases the probability of manual errors. Also, large Excel files are extremely slow. The lack of findability is another disadvantage. Often times new versions are located in different Excel files, which get lost deeper and deeper in the folder structure over time. In audits, this shortcoming can be the undoing of employees because the required information is not immediately available. If files are also related to each other, as can be the case with audit and measure, putting them together resembles a jigsaw puzzle, and we don't have time for that in our workday. As you can see, digital does not mean automated, manual labor increases the amount of work and that should not be the point.
Perhaps the main problem is the lack of structure in Excel. The calculation tool offers too many possibilities. The data collection is so flexible that it leads to complex and individual solutions that are difficult for third parties to understand. Predefined structures facilitate the work in this case.
Using Excel for document management often leads to confusion due to lack of a centralized database
Excel - unconditional love looks different
It definitely takes time to get used to the system in the beginning. Many employees tend to shy away from it. Their intimidation is understandable, the operation of Excel is more complex than you think, some functions are downright hidden. Many employees simply lack the know-how. Before the actual work with Excel can begin, most people can not get around an Excel seminar. Excel is not really popular, but you don't want to be without it either, what a love story.
Excel is a one man show
Excel tables are very dependent on the creator. Only the creator knows his thought process, the other employees unfortunately do not. Accordingly, he must ensure that employees can understand the Excel documents. However, knowledge transfer is not always guaranteed and if the person in charge leaves his post, he often leaves a big question mark for the others. In addition, the calculation tool does not offer the possibility to see which person has made an entry at which time and what exactly has been changed. The lack of traceability of data makes it more difficult to exchange information with each other because you can not easily identify the right contact person. Group work should also be avoided with Excel, as there is no individual access model. When several people are working on a document at the same time, errors are hard to prevent.
The motto of Excel is best described with "to each his own"
There is also a world beyond Excel
Excel was supposed to help with spreadsheet calculations and provide an overview, but instead it only provides more work in data management in the area of quality management. We simply accept the disadvantages because Excel is available anyway and usually does not incur additional costs. The price is ultimately paid by the employees who work with it. But this comfort is not taking us anywhere, its time to change our ways. On the other side, a management system that is tailored to the needs of your company and facilitates the work of employees is waiting. qmbase offers you a centralized data bank with all necessary input masks for your qualitiy management. All documents used in the quality process are located in one place. Thus, they are easily accessible for downstream processes and audits. We support you in changing and improving your quality management system! Contact us now
