In just eight years, you'll laugh at the idea of using Excel the same way you'd laugh at someone using a VCR today. Excel has been an important foundation for inventory management, project portfolio management, financial tracking, and many other functions, but it is already becoming obsolete thanks to modern alternatives that solve some of its basic problems.
But could it really disappear from modern use in the next decade?
Main problems with Excel
To understand why Excel is in danger of becoming obsolete, you need to understand why Excel is crashing. When it was first introduced, and for the first few years of its existence, it was arguably the best option for managing large amounts of data, but since it was ubiquitous, it broke down some of the basic issues and was easy to design.
These problems persist today and include:
1. Lack of flexibility.
First, Excel isn't particularly flexible. It can be used for a wide range of different applications, from inventory tracking to inventory management, but if you're trying to collaborate, Excel is a nightmare. Also, different organizations and individuals may have different format preferences, which can lead to disagreements when trying to move data sets to a new part.
2. Lack of control and security functions.
If you're using Excel to keep track of your daily spending habits, you probably don't need to worry too much about security. But at the business level, where leaders and decision makers use it to shape company direction, it becomes a major concern. With project portfolio management, there are often multiple people editing different iterations on the same spreadsheet, which can lead to confusion about which version is the most up-to-date. Worse yet, the lack of control and security features means your work is more likely to fall into the hands of a stranger (such as mistakenly forwarding it as an email attachment).
3. Cloud unavailability.
Microsoft has made some cloud-friendly changes in recent years, where "storage, computing, and software are available remotely and managed on servers owned by Microsoft." However, many people still use and store files offline with Excel, so they are not available for more than one person to edit at a time and prevent them from making device-based errors. Office products are currently on the move, half in the cloud and half out of the cloud, to appeal to the widest range of consumers. But without this cloud functionality, it's difficult for teams to communicate and collaborate with each other.
4. Excessive overall formatting.
Open an Excel spreadsheet and you'll see the same blank form every time: an endless series of rows and columns, with no more guidance than a handful of basic templates. It may not matter much if you are using Excel for personal reasons, but if you are trying to record and interpret complex information, you may need to adapt it to your specific application, something more intuitive is needed. Most enterprise resource planning software and other cloud-hosted software options offer this more specific format, which makes your life significantly easier.
5. Sensitivity to errors.
Excel is hardly infallible, and the exciting spread of "spreadsheet horror stories" is proof of that. Completely destroying an entire spreadsheet of data and analysis requires just one misspelled entry, a simple mistake that can happen to anyone. If you think it's not too difficult, consider the fact that more than one cell's information, and you claim it wasn't your fault either. In fact, Excel is extremely sensitive to human error, which is terrible if your company has a lot to lose.
How can Excel survive?
These problems alone are not enough to build an Excel tank; After all, Office products are still widely used, Microsoft has made a number of changes to its core products over the years, and support for its customers is strong. Excel may very well continue to live a long life, if Microsoft starts to take these problems seriously and develops a new competitive product that solves them. For now, there are many amazing cloud-based software systems and digital tools outperforming Excel and believe that Excel is still the best platform for data management. Only time will tell if it will be outdated in favor of these new powers.
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