Delete your Spreadsheet, Get a Robot

Businesses of all sizes and industries use spreadsheets in one form or another. They are typically used to collect, store, sort, analyze, and calculate information to aid in the decision-making process.

Microsoft Excel has for long been the go-to software for spreadsheet management. In recent years, the field has become much wider with online platforms such as Google, Smartsheet, Airtable, OpenOffice, Zoho Sheet, and Workday Worksheets among others. These cloud based services have the advantages of simultaneous editing by multiple users, auto-saving your edits, and backup; ensuring you always have a copy of your data.

Day after day, I hear from businesses that are using spreadsheets to manage mission-critical aspects of their business. In many cases, users are managing multiple, offline spreadsheets and exchanging data via email with co-workers. This can work well for some small businesses, but there will come a time (if it hasn’t already), that the spreadsheets just no longer cut it. Whether that is due to the large amount of accumulated data, mistakes and errors in spreadsheets or formulas, or just the amount of manual time it takes employees to scroll through dozens of different spreadsheets looking for vital information.

Does this sound like you? Are you drowning in the sea of spreadsheet hell? Believe it or not, you’re not alone. I have worked with large scale companies that used spreadsheets for major aspects of their operations. As a matter of fact, many companies have become so accustomed to using spreadsheets, they never question if there is a better way until something goes wrong.

I have good news…there is a better way.

Enter the robot…

There has been a lot of news about robots recently and how they are going to take over and become our anthropomorphic, digital overlords. That could happen, but for now I think we’re safe.

In the meantime, we can all have our own robots to take on the monotonous tasks we do each day. No, I’m not talking about a literal robot sitting at the desk where your office manager used to sit. I’m not talking about replacing jobs that people do with robots. I am talking about using your data and using your business rules that you have and make things happen automatically. This is referred to as “workflow automation”.

Imagine, your sales manager spends 2.5 hours per day filtering through spreadsheets to determine what clients need follow-up, what invoices are overdue, who hasn’t been invoiced yet, what salespersons are underperforming, and calculating next month’s projections. You have all of the data points and you know the business logic, you just need to marry the two.

Instead of scrolling through cumbersome spreadsheets to find and send out email follow-ups on proposals, you need a robot to do it for you. With automation, this sales manager simply opens their dashboard and the information is there.

As a result, you have just gained another 12.5 hours of productivity from that employee. You haven’t had to hire another person, intern or your secretary’s grandson to sift through spreadsheets. Now you can focus those hours on increasing sales, managing team members or optimizing other workflows throughout your business.

Conclusion

From simple monotonous tasks, to intricate, multi-part workflows, this is what we do and we do it well. On average, partners see ROI in less than a year due to workflow enhancements, streamlining, and automation that we build for them. Stop drowning in your spreadsheets and see how great automation can be.