We have seen many clients who use Excel sheets to manage Leads, Work logs, Dispatch Data, and many other things too. But it is time-consuming as well as requires lots of concentration once it is connected with other sheets in terms of calculation and dependency.
In this Digital Era, why you should switch to Software from Excel Sheets ?
- Excel sheets are not easy to operate with Formulas and Calculations.
- Excel sheets are not secure.
- It’s difficult to tell who altered the Excel sheets.
- There will be numerous versions of reality.
- Excel sheets are inclined to mistakes.
- Reporting is difficult to generate.
- Visualizing information is troublesome.
- Critical client information is at everyday life’s mercy.
- There’s no native integration with 3rd Party Services.
- Excel sheets make it harder for directors to oversee colleagues.
- Excel sheets don’t offer mobile access.
- Excel sheets are difficult to scale.
1. Excel sheets are not easy to operate with Formulas and Calculations.
It’s basically impossible to get around it. Excel Sheets are simply not user-friendly. They’re adaptable and recognizable, yet when you really want to deal with large information, you’ll end up looking through hundreds, if not thousands, of raws and columns. It’s hard to make Excel Sheets simple to ingest and simple to peruse.
For example, take a look at this Excel Sheet:
2. Excel sheets are not secure.
Rather than a Customized Software that expects users to sign in, Excel SHeets can be shared with anybody, anyplace with the straightforward send of an email. This makes it simple for a displeased or dishonest representative to share leads and client information with outside contacts.
3. It’s difficult to tell who altered the Excel sheets.
While Excel Sheets are astounding cooperative instruments that permit anybody in your group to add data, it’s difficult to tell who altered the sheets. This can make it hard to pinpoint the fitting party assuming a blunder occurs or on the other hand if something different goes wrong with the sheet.
In sales explicitly, setting up a deliberate framework to evenly divide leads and clients when you’re working from Excel Sheets is intense. Except if you train your reps to take fastidious notes and follow a thorough documentation process, there’s no sign of who last contacted a client or prospect, what the substance of the message was, and when the interaction took place.
4. There will be numerous versions of reality.
Everybody may begin working with similar information… in any case, it presumably won’t remain as such for long. Each time an executive rolls out a change to the excel sheet, they’ll need to communicate the alters to be conveyed to the remainder of the group.
And if they forget to do that, you’ll have several versions of the “single” Excel Sheet — all with slightly different data. How will you know which one is right? That’s a sure recipe for creating a messy sales process.
5. Excel sheets are inclined to mistakes.
Indeed, excel sheets aren’t inclined to blunders, however, its users certainly are.
With such countless individuals having their hands on a solitary Excel Sheet, and with so many alters and computations occurring without a moment’s delay, it’s normal that Excel Sheet will contain some sort of blunder. Assuming that you’re expecting precision, don’t anticipate getting it from Excel Sheet. That is the reason it’s wise to put resources into a Customized Software that can rapidly and precisely resolve mistakes all alone, or flag them to you for fixing them. Since the most exceedingly terrible part about Excel Sheets, especially huge ones, is that it’s barely noticeable blunders except if you’re constantly brushing it raw-by-raw.
6. Reporting is difficult to generate.
It’s a sufficiently hard task for every one of the different renditions of an Excel Sheet into one expert duplicate, however, at that point User need to gather only related reports in view of the information. As an individual who has attempted to report from Excel knows, it’s not for weak-willed. Also the more complex your information, the harder reporting becomes.
7. Visualizing information is troublesome.
As referenced, clients can create diagrams and charts in Excel Sheets. Be that as it may, “create” is the keyword. Gathering any sort of information visualization on an excel sheet is tedious and disappointing. Managers could select to avoid the visuals through and through – all things considered, they’re excessive. Yet, introducing an Excel Sheet with a large number of columns long is ensured to make your colleagues’ eyes cross.
8. Critical client information is at everyday life’s mercy.
Assuming you’re utilizing Excel, you risk losing information. Bunches of information. Information that lives exclusively on individual PCs can be lost always assuming your PC takes a tumble or gets drenched in espresso. While Google Sheets is an extraordinary other option, it can likewise be dependent upon information misfortune assuming you lose your web connection.
9. There’s no native integration with 3rd Party Services.
To associate your Excel Sheets to different frameworks you use, you’d need to trust that integration exists on Zapier or a comparative other platforms. On the off chance that it doesn’t, you’re in a tight spot, and you’d need to physically move the information over to different frameworks.
An absence of reconciliation implies that clients and possibilities may get repetitive data… or on the other hand none by any stretch of the imagination. Neither of these situations converts into deals or development for your business.
10. Excel sheets make it harder for directors to oversee colleagues.
To effectively coach and mentor, managers need to have visibility into the daily actions and processes of their team members. This is all but impossible to do through Excel Sheets. Both team members and managers will quickly become frustrated with the seemingly endless cycle of uploading, downloading, attaching, and emailing Excel Sheets.
A much better alternative is a project management tool or a Customized Software that keeps record of all rep activity.
11. Excel sheets don’t offer mobile access.
This is bad for any team, but it’s specially bad for sales. Mobile access to sales systems has been proven to increase rep productivity — by as much as 24%, according to some estimations. But regardless of the other virtues of Excel Sheets, they’re not exactly mobile-friendly. Dragging out a laptop each and every time you need to enter or change customer data gets old in a hurry.
12. Excel sheets are difficult to scale.
Once your company — and your customer list — starts growing, sales Sheets will need to as well. However, the bigger the Excel Sheet, the more likely it is to contain errors and broken formulas. Not to mention that large Excel Sheets are exponentially more unwieldy for users and administrators alike.
Excel Sheets sound like a hard “no,” don’t they? But when do you use a Excel Sheet over other types of tools? Let’s go over those instances now.
Using Customized Software Compared to Excel Sheets
Custom Software are programs that are designed to store, organize, and retrieve data. In sales, the most common type of database used is a client relationship manager, also known as a CRM. First, learn about the benefits of a CRM. Then, let’s compare working with Custom Software to working out of an Excel Sheet.
1. A Custom Software serves as a central resource.
Customized software is a tool that stores all of your client and customer contact information in one central place that can be easily accessed by your entire team across multiple devices. This system can organize all of your contact-related data, including emails, phone calls, and live chat with customers and prospects.
2. It offers seamless integration with other 3rd Party Services.
Additionally, Customized Software can be seamlessly integrated with your company’s other business systems, including marketing software, which can improve collaboration between your sales and marketing organizations, ensuring your prospects don’t receive the same information or get missed altogether.
3. It’s easy to scale for growing companies.
Excel Sheets are effective at storing basic quantitative data and are often maintained manually. On the other hand, Custom Softwares are more effective at storing qualitative data, which is why they are ideal for complex businesses with a large customer base or a complex sales process. Databases often have automation capabilities that help organizations save time on manual entry.
For companies that are scaling, or rapidly acquiring new customers in a short period of time, upgrading from Excel Sheets to Custom Software can help your company sell to more customers.
Are the advantages of Excel Sheets worth bearing the disadvantages?
The benefit of using Excel Sheets for business comes down to two main factors: They’re free (with a Microsoft Office or Google Workspace implementation), and they don’t require training.
These are certainly valid reasons — especially for a small company without cash to burn or training resources. But a Custom Solution is a much better fit for most teams. And the best part? The software can be just as low-cost compare to the disadvantages of Excel Sheet. Ditch the Excel Sheets along with all of their various problems, and get a Custom Solution to effectively grow your team and your company.
