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I’ve worked in many large companies, and I have never seen one using SAP or other large tools as single sources. It always has been excel. From my experience du

by baxtr 9y ago

I’ve worked in many large companies, and I have never seen one using SAP or other large tools as single sources. It always has been excel. From my experience due to 3 reasons - excel is much more flexible, I can add a column, delete those I don’t want etc - speed: many of those large corporate systems are just damn slow, maybe because of stupid configurations, but still often very slow an annoying - analysis: It's easy to do some basic analysis without studying CS

rjtavares 9y ago
I agree with those 3 reasons, but I wouldd add a fourth: easy to create your own version of the truth. I'm not implying this is due to nefarious reasons (though sometimes it is): sometimes the official version of the truth is just not adequate.
- tcarn 9y ago
  Definitely, great point. Tools like Tableau/Power BI make it very easy to get a misleading version of the truth, since it can very easily include misleading data points and/or make calculations in a fashion that leads the user to misinterpret KPIs.
arethuza 9y ago
I have - worked on getting Hyperion FM implemented across ~30 countries fed by about 40 ERP systems. All outputs were generated by a .Net application generating read-only Excel spreadsheets (which might have 30 tabs and up to 15,000 values on a tab) - was done this way to meet the very complex reporting requirements. All the ~20 report packs in the company were produced with one click in a simple web app. Ah-hoc querying of Hyperion was done from Excel using the SmartView plugin.
enraged_camel 9y ago
Actually, the main reason is that SAP is expensive as hell. The starter package is $1400 per user (one time) or $410 per user per year. And that's just the software. Add consulting services that are always necessary to actually make it fit your organization and you're easily looking at millions of dollars in capital spend.
jpindar 9y ago
I rather think the real reason is inertia. I use Excel because my boss wants to use Excel, because all his bosses have wanted to use Excel, because all their previous bosses have wanted to use Excel. That's how it works in the electronics manufacturing industry, anyway.

by baxtr 9y ago

rjtavares 9y ago

I agree with those 3 reasons, but I wouldd add a fourth: easy to create your own version of the truth. I'm not implying this is due to nefarious reasons (though sometimes it is): sometimes the official version of the truth is just not adequate.

tcarn 9y ago
Definitely, great point. Tools like Tableau/Power BI make it very easy to get a misleading version of the truth, since it can very easily include misleading data points and/or make calculations in a fashion that leads the user to misinterpret KPIs.

arethuza 9y ago

I have - worked on getting Hyperion FM implemented across ~30 countries fed by about 40 ERP systems. All outputs were generated by a .Net application generating read-only Excel spreadsheets (which might have 30 tabs and up to 15,000 values on a tab) - was done this way to meet the very complex reporting requirements. All the ~20 report packs in the company were produced with one click in a simple web app. Ah-hoc querying of Hyperion was done from Excel using the SmartView plugin.

enraged_camel 9y ago

Actually, the main reason is that SAP is expensive as hell. The starter package is $1400 per user (one time) or $410 per user per year. And that's just the software. Add consulting services that are always necessary to actually make it fit your organization and you're easily looking at millions of dollars in capital spend.

jpindar 9y ago

I rather think the real reason is inertia. I use Excel because my boss wants to use Excel, because all his bosses have wanted to use Excel, because all their previous bosses have wanted to use Excel. That's how it works in the electronics manufacturing industry, anyway.