Paladone I Love Spreadsheets Mug

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I’m not alone either! In 2017, research showed that 71% of organizations are using excel to collect data across business units. The demand for end user computing (EUC) applications has never been higher. Even with the proliferation of platforms across finance, many teams are still reconciling and aggregating data in spreadsheets despite unprecedented investment in IT solutions. The ex-auditor in me shudders when I think of the risks inherent in spreadsheet use across finance. I know how wierd it sounds to say “I love spreadsheets!”. I mean, you don’t hear people saying things like “I love Word documents!”, or, “I love JPEGS!” do you?! Ability to assign tasks to team members within a collaboration workbook, and have the spreadsheet do the chasing up! Start by analyzing your processes and identify what your pain points are. Where do you regularly experience frustrations are there any easily identifiable challenges in your marketing process. So, spreadsheets — while I 💓 you, there are some areas we need to work on. I went ahead and made a list (I hope you’ll forgive me 🤨!)

Andreas Jonsson, cofounder and chief executive of LinkedIn analytics app Shield, says spreadsheets can save you crucial time and money in the early days of a startup. Another option is using an API. As a starting place, here’s an article about how to read spreadsheets using an API in Python. With an API, we’re able to use other languages like Java or R as well!Now they pretty much do anything,” he says. “The flexibility has been growing a lot and doesn’t show signs of stopping. That’s why at Rows we built the spreadsheet that works as modern teams do — it’s data-rich, collaborative and crazy fast. You can build anything from everyday tasks and lead lists, to automated reports and internal tools”

The Reinhart-Rogoff Facepalm Moment — Harvard’s Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff are two of the most respected and influential academic economists active today. Or at least, they were. However, when they obtained the actual spreadsheet used for the original calculations, they identified three errors.

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Can you think of another system in finance that doesn’t have access controls built in? For good reason, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) requires that all organisations should behave ethically and limit access to financial data. Data breaches and leaks are not uncommon, and can lead to significant financial loss for a company — recently evidenced by the FinCEN leaks in the US. Ability to have real-time dialogue between team members within a workbook with mention functionality. I want to stay in flow when I’m in the spreadsheet zone 🙏 I’ve dealt with marketing managers who run their entire marketing plan from one spreadsheet. This hallowed document takes months to prepare and is access protected to try and manage version control & file corruption; it goes through hundreds of iterations before the marketing director can approve it. The issue with this is not around planning – that’s a perfectly sensible thing to do, the problem is what happens next. A plan is only as good as its execution and using a spreadsheet is not fit for purpose. At this stage what marketers need is marketing resource management (MRM) solution, something that is agile and will allow them to link their plan to actual campaigns and adjust it accordingly when required. Suddenly, I have error terror! So, what are the most common risks, and what can we do about them? ⚠ RISK 1 — WHERE ARE THE SPREADSHEETS? Partly I think it’s symptomatic of a ‘we’ve always done it this way’ culture and partly because its more difficult to demonstrate return on investment - if a sales person doesn’t have a phone, they can’t make sales calls, simple as that. Does that make it right? Definitely not.

If you’re into coding, working with Excel in your programs can be really fun! The most common way to connect with Excel is using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which is what most Microsoft Office programs are programmed with. There are many resources available online but here’s a great starter. Ultimately, in my mind, they’re used to organise chaos. A tornado of information is organised into rows, columns and sheets and suddenly, the world makes sense again. I love a good spreadsheet and for calculating numbers and organizing information in columns and rows there’s nothing better. Surely your marketing department deserves a better toolset to deal with the challenges in today’s complex digital age? Ability to limit access to data, or spreadsheets, within a workbook that contains sensitive information. I expect that, in many cases, the answer to that is they either don’t plan, or they spend ages writing stuff out on paper.

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Power Query: Within the Power Query Editor, there is a “Remove Rows” tool under the “Reduce Rows” section. Within that is an option to “Remove Duplicates”, which will look at your first column and only keep the first instance of any identical cell values. An inventory of pre-approved templates with documented approval and owners, categorized into levels of risk

An approval process that releases a financial model, or a spreadsheet of any kind, into ‘production’. This approval process should certify that the workbook has passed an audit and is available for general use. ⚠ RISK 5 — SPAGHETTI JUNCTION It’s not uncommon for spreadsheets to proliferate across an organisation. with work becoming more decentralized and teams working remotely, I’m willing to bet there are multiple copies of every spreadsheet hanging over the metaverse. And yet, there is no inventory or repository kept of all spreadsheets in use. The ability to simply, and securely, link workbooks directly to a data source — eliminating the need to replicate data by copy/paste ⚠ RISK 2 — TOO MANY COOKS The definition of merging spreadsheets is right in its name — we want to combine two or more spreadsheets into a single spreadsheet. This is a really essential skill to learn for any novice Excel users out there. Interesting… what should I already know?

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I love spreadsheets! I genuinely do. It may possibly be the nerdiest thing I’ve ever admitted to. Maybe it’s the IKEA effect, having invested 20 years honing vlookup skills, formatting pivot tables, and choosing just the right graph to make my financial data mean something to someone, or maybe I just like the feeling of sinking into that comfortable spreadsheet memory foam. Don’t get me wrong, my spreadsheets are far from perfect, but I just can’t walk away. It’s reported that close to 90% of spreadsheets contain errors — given that Microsoft reports over 1 billion O365 users globally — we’re dealing with an erroneous spreadsheet pandemic! I know there’s more to a spreadsheet than that, pretty charts, macros, the ability to manipulate data (although I do have to admit that pivot tables are beyond me), however, at its core the above definition is pretty accurate. If this is the case then why are so many organisations still using spreadsheets to manage their marketing campaigns?