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> 1. Anyone who can get an add-in pasted corporate software security can also use a better tool outside Excel. In other words: think carefully about the custome

by kohanz 11y ago

> 1. Anyone who can get an add-in pasted corporate software security can also use a better tool outside Excel. In other words: think carefully about the customer. What other tools are available? A lot of technical people don't choose Excel, but come into situations where Excel has been relied upon historically and the non-technical people do not want to move away from it. So I could see such a plugin having value in these situations (non-technical people continue to use the spreadsheet as-is, while the programmer improves it via the plugin), which I would imagine are quite common (I have been in this situation before). > Users don't buy plugins in larger businesses, etc. Fact or opinion?

wjnc 11y ago
>> 1. Anyone who can get an add-in pasted corporate software security can also use a better tool outside Excel. In other words: think carefully about the customer. > What other tools are available? A lot of technical people don't choose Excel, but come into situations where Excel has been relied upon historically and the non-technical people do not want to move away from it. So I could see such a plugin having value in these situations (non-technical people continue to use the spreadsheet as-is, while the programmer improves it via the plugin), which I would imagine are quite common (I have been in this situation before). In my enviroment (slow finance, seen a few firms, second line hence the reviewing of many a workhorse). The IT-department is pretty Microsoft-captured. The quants are pretty much do-as-they-want (Java, .NET, VBA). Whatever they know and can get their hands on. Then the financials in accounting. Excel is king there and is pretty much the workhorse surrounding the customer, financial and management accounting systems. My main point here is that I have yet to find a firm where the use of tools is not historic, and where those totally different skillsets / user sets work together on tooling. The use case you describe (non-technical people continue to use the spreadsheet as-is, while the programmer improves it via the plugin) fails for me (or rather: is an exceptional situation), since the big value of Excel is that the non-technical persons builds his own model. I know of one bank that has started working with teams with explicitly different skillsets (so IT, business and finance always in one team). In that case, tooling like this would rock. >> Users don't buy plugins in larger businesses, etc. >Fact or opinion? I would say this is a fact. It's the theme that's pretty common that B2B-sales is a different park than B2C-sales. B2B-sales in larger firms goes via a sourcing department, that possibly has preferred suppliers, etc. So just being a cool tool, still gets you installed on 0 corporate pc's that are basicly in lockdown.
zhte415 11y ago
>> Users don't buy plugins in larger businesses, etc. >Fact or opinion? Users definitely buy plugins, but these bring significant functionality and often tie-in to additional services. Financial data being the most familiar to me. These plugins, while wrapped in VBA, are often in C++ (again, finance world) for robustness and performance, and try to be as agnostic to whatever nutty layout or logic a user chooses to have for their spreadsheet. So, agree, with the pragmatic assertion that technical people love Excel as a UI, but they're probably not necessarily developer-technical (could be, given the richness of Excel plugins can have on some platforms), but technical in another field and Excel is an easily hackable UI for what they really want to do, which is mainly, as the OP suggests, using Excel to change stuff and do what-ifs, which spreadsheets were designed to do (as if, to close the circle).

by kohanz 11y ago

wjnc 11y ago

>> 1. Anyone who can get an add-in pasted corporate software security can also use a better tool outside Excel. In other words: think carefully about the customer. > What other tools are available? A lot of technical people don't choose Excel, but come into situations where Excel has been relied upon historically and the non-technical people do not want to move away from it. So I could see such a plugin having value in these situations (non-technical people continue to use the spreadsheet as-is, while the programmer improves it via the plugin), which I would imagine are quite common (I have been in this situation before). In my enviroment (slow finance, seen a few firms, second line hence the reviewing of many a workhorse). The IT-department is pretty Microsoft-captured. The quants are pretty much do-as-they-want (Java, .NET, VBA). Whatever they know and can get their hands on. Then the financials in accounting. Excel is king there and is pretty much the workhorse surrounding the customer, financial and management accounting systems. My main point here is that I have yet to find a firm where the use of tools is not historic, and where those totally different skillsets / user sets work together on tooling. The use case you describe (non-technical people continue to use the spreadsheet as-is, while the programmer improves it via the plugin) fails for me (or rather: is an exceptional situation), since the big value of Excel is that the non-technical persons builds his own model. I know of one bank that has started working with teams with explicitly different skillsets (so IT, business and finance always in one team). In that case, tooling like this would rock. >> Users don't buy plugins in larger businesses, etc. >Fact or opinion? I would say this is a fact. It's the theme that's pretty common that B2B-sales is a different park than B2C-sales. B2B-sales in larger firms goes via a sourcing department, that possibly has preferred suppliers, etc. So just being a cool tool, still gets you installed on 0 corporate pc's that are basicly in lockdown.

zhte415 11y ago

>> Users don't buy plugins in larger businesses, etc. >Fact or opinion? Users definitely buy plugins, but these bring significant functionality and often tie-in to additional services. Financial data being the most familiar to me. These plugins, while wrapped in VBA, are often in C++ (again, finance world) for robustness and performance, and try to be as agnostic to whatever nutty layout or logic a user chooses to have for their spreadsheet. So, agree, with the pragmatic assertion that technical people love Excel as a UI, but they're probably not necessarily developer-technical (could be, given the richness of Excel plugins can have on some platforms), but technical in another field and Excel is an easily hackable UI for what they really want to do, which is mainly, as the OP suggests, using Excel to change stuff and do what-ifs, which spreadsheets were designed to do (as if, to close the circle).