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Excel runs the world. Every large company claiming to be ERP-native is telling lies. Shit gets done in Excel, and is then exported back into ERP, if at all. Th

by fleddr 4y ago

Excel runs the world. Every large company claiming to be ERP-native is telling lies. Shit gets done in Excel, and is then exported back into ERP, if at all. Things you would consider quite irresponsible to be done in Excel, is done in Excel regardless. Indeed, that annual financial report of a Fortune 500 boils down to financialresults_v2_nowaitonemorechange_final_FINAL_withcomments_official.xlsx" My g/f works for one of the leading ERP providers. I won't tell you which one but it starts with an S and ends with AP. They're dogfooding their own ERP but employees prefer Excel. It's like gravity, just stop resisting.

ant6n 4y ago
Well, theres one issue: everybody hates SAP.
vsareto 4y ago
We have non-excel financial reports via a web app, but of course the actual software requirements were gathered in an excel file It is not vastly easier to use than Excel, but certainly nice when there’s a web app to find instead of a loose file
- antisthenes 4y ago
  I know several scientists with PhDs whose workflow involved Windows 7 sticky notes to an extent that would make the average HN reader pull out their hair in shock. We're talking about well-published in Nature experts. Sure, eventually they publish results with LaTeX, but a lot of intermediate steps will involve Excel/Word or even something more primitive. It is what it is.
  - teleforce 4y ago
    Your story reminds me of this research lab with state-of-the-art 10 Trillion FPS camera. From the video they apparently are still using Windows 7 for the measurement set up [1]. They're publishing in Nature and most probably using Excel for some of their data processing workflow. My former research lab is, however, mainly using Igor Pro software running on Windows. It is waves based professional data processing software tool that has friendly GUI and intuitive table interfaces not unlike Excel but geared towards scientists and engineers [2]. [1]Filming the Speed of Light at 10 Trillion FPS: https://youtu.be/7Ys_yKGNFRQ https://youtu.be/7Ys_yKGNFRQ [2]IGOR Pro: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGOR_Pro https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGOR_Pro
collegeburner 4y ago
fr lol everybody who's worked in IB knows this. you go look in a VDR and it's like 99% excel files and PDFs. although for smaller businesses it's usually a quickbooks export or whatever, but whenever people need to actually get shit done or do something SAP or Oracle or whatever doesn't do right or takes too long.
phpisthebest 4y ago
Never, I will never stop resisting excel. I wonder how many of these same companies end up with massive errors in their excel docs because of lack of formula control, input validation, and a whole host of other controls that ERP's are designed to prevent, that excel will happily do Honestly I think that is why user want Excel, properly written software prevents the user from doing stupid things, excel does not Human Error is rampant in Excel Docs, I remember a few years ago we had a project to convert some excel docs people were using into a web app, the number of mathematical errors, and invalid controls we found was unreal
anothernewdude 4y ago
Excel is what you hope your competition is using.
resonious 4y ago
Us devs like to complain about Excel because it's sloppy, but ERPs tend to be so awful to use. It's the same as thinking you know how to write clean code, then balking at everyone else's code. Excel sheets are just another "someone else's dirty code". Given the general quality of software in the world today, I would expect that most ERPs are just as bad as Excel sheets under the hood.
mellavora 4y ago
You might decide to go to "cash in the mattress" if you realized how much of our modern banking system runs on excel. Except for the back-end, which is COBOL.

by fleddr 4y ago

ant6n 4y ago

Well, theres one issue: everybody hates SAP.

vsareto 4y ago

We have non-excel financial reports via a web app, but of course the actual software requirements were gathered in an excel file It is not vastly easier to use than Excel, but certainly nice when there’s a web app to find instead of a loose file

antisthenes 4y ago
I know several scientists with PhDs whose workflow involved Windows 7 sticky notes to an extent that would make the average HN reader pull out their hair in shock. We're talking about well-published in Nature experts. Sure, eventually they publish results with LaTeX, but a lot of intermediate steps will involve Excel/Word or even something more primitive. It is what it is.
- teleforce 4y ago
  Your story reminds me of this research lab with state-of-the-art 10 Trillion FPS camera. From the video they apparently are still using Windows 7 for the measurement set up [1]. They're publishing in Nature and most probably using Excel for some of their data processing workflow. My former research lab is, however, mainly using Igor Pro software running on Windows. It is waves based professional data processing software tool that has friendly GUI and intuitive table interfaces not unlike Excel but geared towards scientists and engineers [2]. [1]Filming the Speed of Light at 10 Trillion FPS: https://youtu.be/7Ys_yKGNFRQ https://youtu.be/7Ys_yKGNFRQ [2]IGOR Pro: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGOR_Pro https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGOR_Pro

collegeburner 4y ago

fr lol everybody who's worked in IB knows this. you go look in a VDR and it's like 99% excel files and PDFs. although for smaller businesses it's usually a quickbooks export or whatever, but whenever people need to actually get shit done or do something SAP or Oracle or whatever doesn't do right or takes too long.

phpisthebest 4y ago

Never, I will never stop resisting excel. I wonder how many of these same companies end up with massive errors in their excel docs because of lack of formula control, input validation, and a whole host of other controls that ERP's are designed to prevent, that excel will happily do Honestly I think that is why user want Excel, properly written software prevents the user from doing stupid things, excel does not Human Error is rampant in Excel Docs, I remember a few years ago we had a project to convert some excel docs people were using into a web app, the number of mathematical errors, and invalid controls we found was unreal

anothernewdude 4y ago

Excel is what you hope your competition is using.

resonious 4y ago

Us devs like to complain about Excel because it's sloppy, but ERPs tend to be so awful to use. It's the same as thinking you know how to write clean code, then balking at everyone else's code. Excel sheets are just another "someone else's dirty code". Given the general quality of software in the world today, I would expect that most ERPs are just as bad as Excel sheets under the hood.

mellavora 4y ago

You might decide to go to "cash in the mattress" if you realized how much of our modern banking system runs on excel. Except for the back-end, which is COBOL.