Thought Piece

Those questions are really about:
Why is Excel the most exciting application?
How much data do you think that you can crunch?
Are all of those other, more expensive, supposedly more "serious" tools actually used?

In answer to Point 3 above is that the surprising truth — for me, anyway — is that they're not used. Companies buy them, deploy them, and instruct people to use them. But then they get used for only a small fraction of the tasks that justified their price tag. (my recent experiences with IBM TM1 (cognos), SAP BI, Oracle crm, Compuware ChangePoint).

What they do get used for, over and over again, is as an export source for Excel! I like to say that "Export to Excel" is the third most common button in data applications — behind "OK" and "Cancel". The ubiquity of the Export button is not a detail. It's everything. It's an admission, by those tools, that they cannot meet all your needs.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Excel 2010/2013/2016 is a quantum leap in Excel capability and software vendors in this space (BI Data Analytics and ETL) should be worried.

"Just give me all the data and I will put it into Excel" is one of the most commonly uttered phrases in the business world. I used to think that was pride/stubbornness on the part of the Excel users, but not anymore. Those other data tools, despite their claims of flexibility, are actually quite rigid. When the realities of your business inevitably don't quite match the expectations of the tool, you require lengthy/expensive intervention from administrators or consultants. (Of course there are other contributing issues such as lacklustre handovers, ineffective training, staff turnover, ..etc.)

That's when you reach for the world's most popular programming language by far: Excel. Formulas, pivots, charts, are, together, a cleverly disguised programming language that is learnable by "normal" people.

Excel should be taken just as seriously as "real" programming languages like C and Java. And being a programming language, Excel can handle everything that the uncooperative real world throws at you.

No data tool measures up to that today. And if a true competitor ever does emerge, it will not be a tool, but another cleverly disguised programming language, one that is readily learnable by hundreds of millions of people. I won't be holding my breath.

Excel is not merely "good enough", a tactical tool. It's straight out better! It can now take its place as a **strategic** tool. For 20 years, IT and data tools vendors have been trying to get rid of Excel. There's a reason it's more popular than ever: it's just the best data tool in the world.

And I am talking about the "NEW EXCEL"

Excel 2010/2013/2016 is a quantum leap in Excel capability and software vendors in this (BI Data Analytics and ETL) space should be worried.

NOW WHY IS THAT?

Excel 2010 introduced a number of Major upgrades, "NEW Excel"
New Incredibly Powerful Calculation Engine
Excel Services, Browser (no Excel required), Dashboards Interactive, Refresh Remotely Secure.
Power Pivot (and Load to a Model and DAX formulas)
Power Query (and the M language)

The big change is that Excel has quietly undergone a major revolution in recent years. It used to be "just" formulas, charts, pivots, and that was already good enough to be the world's best data tool.

The Revolution

The core is that "Modern Excel" Ups the Power - the xVelocity engine. A dramatic increase in the capability of excel to calculate masses of data.

As well as the new engine:

"While you were sleeping", Microsoft has dramatically expanded the Excel "ecosystem" of technologies.

My three favourites

1. Excel Services: a server version of Excel that provides security, cross-platform reach, One Version Of The Truth, and hands-free/scheduled data refresh. These were for a long time "holes" in the Excel story.

2. Power Pivot: turbocharges analysis and reporting by adding an industrial-strength (but still learnable!) data modelling and formula engine. Introduces and extends data capacity as high as hundreds of millions of rows. Blends the flexibility, agility, and learnability of traditional Excel with the robustness and clarity of Business Intelligence platforms. DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) think formula on steroids! Works on database.
Portable Formulas Convert your final Pivot to formulas and move around the report!
Removes the need for VLOOKUP, with Merge (a visual linking).

3. Power Query: finds, imports, filters, and "re-shapes" data. No matter what tool you use, one of the precursors to any analysis work is to import data and perform "surgery" on it, to prep it for analysis. Removing "noise" rows like blanks and subtotals. Transposing columns into rows. Removing duplicates. The list goes on, and until Power Query came along, all of that was manual, repetitive work (the 80:20 rule). With Power Query, (including the M language) it all becomes very simple, and even better — the next time you get new data? Just click refresh, and all of that data shaping happens automatically. Fantastic for Process Automation, (payroll, reporting, etc.)

Given the dramatic expansion of Excel's powers, I refer to it as "New Excel." Just calling it "Excel" doesn't do it justice, because I've found that ALL of the people I have spoken to aren't aware of the new features mentioned above. Management Accountants and Analysts, for example use Excel every day of their working lives, and yet they do not know!

Think enterprise-level Business Intelligence work. NEW Excel, is more than up to the task, and if we start using it in that capacity every day, we will be helping companies save millions of pounds.

So the answers to the …" can you Extract, Transform Load Analyse and Report 100million rows of data (or more) using nothing but Excel?", is YES.

Can the CFO/CEO (remotely) see your analysis, refresh the data, and drill and interact with the 'dashboard' without having Excel on the device

YES!

So WHY do you need to MOVE NOW?

Because you need to differentiate yourself from all those other Excel/Analysts. From 2009 to present this has been a secret (while you were sleeping) now it's being shipped STANDARD on all Excel 2016. So the rush is on; teach yourself, find the add-ons, look for blogs — there are no textbooks… and by the way, we have the Lead.

Banks are not charities. But they do calculate the lifetime value of the customer and they understand the reputational risk to themselves of the slash and burn exercises they are sometimes accused of.

That brings us to the role of the banks, so often the largest creditor and certainly the one with the most intimate knowledge of how a company is faring. We all love a stereotype and the heartless, faceless bank pulling the plug on sound businesses over a minor blip sits deep in the business consciousness. But not all banks fit this caricature. "We want to work with management of a business facing difficulties to help identify the issues and provide solutions to get them back on track," says a senior manager with a leading retail bank. "We can make the most impact when the problems are identified early. We are keen for management to be open with us."

Banks are not charities. But they do calculate the lifetime value of the customer and they understand the reputational risk to themselves of the slash and burn exercises they are sometimes accused of. Most solutions to business difficulties involve access to more funds and/or different products (hedging, leasing, factoring) and that all adds up to continued and profitable involvement for the bank.

A Repositioning Turnaround may mean divestment of a troublesome subsidiary. It may mean embarking on (yet another) cost-cutting exercise, including turning away revenue opportunities if they are not of a sufficiently high margin. It most certainly involves a first step of getting an impartial and pragmatic overview of what the problem actually is, from Turnaround Professionals who also know the kind of language with which to talk to banks. The moment you take this kind of decisive action, you're likely to discover that there's no crisis, no drama, only urgent action that must start now.

Peter Charles 2010