5 ms·

90% of the people who invent a CRM on a spreadsheet are better off using that flexible spreadsheet they know very well and can change, add or remove features, s

90% of the people who invent a CRM on a spreadsheet are better off using that flexible spreadsheet they know very well and can change, add or remove features, store anywhere they want etc. than using a stupid CRM software with 3 features, designed around its creator limited imagination only.

ENGNR 9y ago
Microsoft Access used to be the real test. By the time they've added a UI and started to get frustrated with one user at a time it's time for a CRUD app and a database
lev99 9y ago
The person that invents the CRM spreadsheet is better off. However, that spreadsheet is usually harder to share with the rest of the company. If the spreadsheet has more than 1 user than it might be worth a SaaS.
- matte_black 9y ago
  Just use a google sheet and you’re good for a long time.
  - lev99 9y ago
    It depends. Sheets with multiple users is a bad smell to me.
reificator 9y ago
Yeah. Until they leave for another job and literally no one else in the company can understand the ad-hoc process unintentionally developed over five years of "let's just add this here". Which is not to say that whatever replaces it is guaranteed to be better, but it will at least have a good start by using the right tools for the job.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
wil421 9y ago
How is a spreadsheet scalable for a large organization? The team or person might be better off but CRMs and other tools help the organization standardize their processes. What happens when this person leaves? What if business starts booming and you need to scale up? Are you really better off sharing a spreadsheet between a 100 or more people?
- Endy 9y ago
  > How is a spreadsheet scalable for a large organization? Just gonna focus on this part here. The last offices I worked in (and the last places I even dealt with tech stuff beyond teaching it to primary-schoolers), "Track Changes" was simply a godsend. One person "owned" the spreadsheet and could allow use or not; and we had it hosted on OneDrive - of course we all had the OneDrive client on our work PCs and it could tie into Excel natively, so we were all using the same document. If the entirety of a large org needs the same spreadsheet, you're probably looking at a scenario where they really need multiple sheets, but haven't figured out how to do references to other files and sheets yet. But using Track Changes and having one person designated as Owner so that that one individual makes a decision to approve/disapprove all potential changes makes it much easier to let multiple people work together. > What happens when this person leaves? That's a management / succession-planning issue. Ad-hoc solutions shouldn't be kept secret, and allowing employees to just go off and do as they please in that regard is a major issue. If all work-related documents are required to be stored in the company cloud, and you storing a new doc alerts your manager, etc., you'll be able to deal with this much easier. One place I worked for a few weeks on a project did a reset on employee's terminals every Friday at around 7PM, and anyone who claimed they lost data or progress from that on Monday was in trouble, because they didn't save company-related data to the document & data server (which obviously did not get reset) - meaning they'd done something against company policy that they'd been told about the day they were hired.
realusername 9y ago
The issue for the spreadsheet is always around data-integrity, people start typing random things in their Excel and then it's a mess to try to make sense of the data. I would not mind Excel much if it was strongly typed instead.
- ModernMech 9y ago
  But being strongly typed would remove a lot of the usability that makes Excel the most widely used programming language among non programmers.
  - beefield 9y ago
    I think there would be space for a middle ground solution where you could define a sheet "type" to something like "datatable" that would enforce data types on columns, only allow data entered a row at a time and if calculated columns were there, would enforce same formula in each row.
- paulryanrogers 9y ago
  Isn't that what Microsoft Access was?
- fiatjaf 9y ago
  Perhaps there's something to try in that space.

ENGNR 9y ago

Microsoft Access used to be the real test. By the time they've added a UI and started to get frustrated with one user at a time it's time for a CRUD app and a database

lev99 9y ago

The person that invents the CRM spreadsheet is better off. However, that spreadsheet is usually harder to share with the rest of the company. If the spreadsheet has more than 1 user than it might be worth a SaaS.

matte_black 9y ago
Just use a google sheet and you’re good for a long time.
- lev99 9y ago
  It depends. Sheets with multiple users is a bad smell to me.

reificator 9y ago

Yeah. Until they leave for another job and literally no one else in the company can understand the ad-hoc process unintentionally developed over five years of "let's just add this here". Which is not to say that whatever replaces it is guaranteed to be better, but it will at least have a good start by using the right tools for the job.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

wil421 9y ago

How is a spreadsheet scalable for a large organization? The team or person might be better off but CRMs and other tools help the organization standardize their processes. What happens when this person leaves? What if business starts booming and you need to scale up? Are you really better off sharing a spreadsheet between a 100 or more people?

Endy 9y ago
> How is a spreadsheet scalable for a large organization? Just gonna focus on this part here. The last offices I worked in (and the last places I even dealt with tech stuff beyond teaching it to primary-schoolers), "Track Changes" was simply a godsend. One person "owned" the spreadsheet and could allow use or not; and we had it hosted on OneDrive - of course we all had the OneDrive client on our work PCs and it could tie into Excel natively, so we were all using the same document. If the entirety of a large org needs the same spreadsheet, you're probably looking at a scenario where they really need multiple sheets, but haven't figured out how to do references to other files and sheets yet. But using Track Changes and having one person designated as Owner so that that one individual makes a decision to approve/disapprove all potential changes makes it much easier to let multiple people work together. > What happens when this person leaves? That's a management / succession-planning issue. Ad-hoc solutions shouldn't be kept secret, and allowing employees to just go off and do as they please in that regard is a major issue. If all work-related documents are required to be stored in the company cloud, and you storing a new doc alerts your manager, etc., you'll be able to deal with this much easier. One place I worked for a few weeks on a project did a reset on employee's terminals every Friday at around 7PM, and anyone who claimed they lost data or progress from that on Monday was in trouble, because they didn't save company-related data to the document & data server (which obviously did not get reset) - meaning they'd done something against company policy that they'd been told about the day they were hired.

realusername 9y ago

The issue for the spreadsheet is always around data-integrity, people start typing random things in their Excel and then it's a mess to try to make sense of the data. I would not mind Excel much if it was strongly typed instead.

ModernMech 9y ago
But being strongly typed would remove a lot of the usability that makes Excel the most widely used programming language among non programmers.
- beefield 9y ago
  I think there would be space for a middle ground solution where you could define a sheet "type" to something like "datatable" that would enforce data types on columns, only allow data entered a row at a time and if calculated columns were there, would enforce same formula in each row.
paulryanrogers 9y ago
Isn't that what Microsoft Access was?
fiatjaf 9y ago
Perhaps there's something to try in that space.