Someone Hates Excel

By this time the business world has already figured out that Excel is a very powerful tool to do simple and also some complex calculations, prepare tables and graphs for exploration analysis and presentations, relate data from different tables and sources and sometimes even serve as a datawarehouse. This is true because no other tool performs this tasks, all together, as fast and as simple and easy to use as Excel, and that makes it such a wonderful tool. We know the limitations of it and the misusage, there is no perfect tool, but the strenghts are undeniable.

So why are some people so afraid or hateful about Excel? Most times there seems to be a hidden motive. The critics do not really have an alternative solution. On the other hand some of the issues or risks of Excel usage are related to the process, data and sometimes people competences, profile and knwoledge, not the tool itself, therefore another tool does not really solve or tackle the root cause. Most alternatives do not really replace Excel and have the same features. In fact, from my experience, there is a shadow interest to sell other tools and solutions (e.g. data warehousing, analytics and reporting) by software vendors or to capture and gain access and ownership to aditional roles in the company (e.g. internal power struggle and agency costs). Usually there is not really a genuine interest to improve and solve the problem.

Excel capabilities include:
1. Structure and archive data - data warehousing
2. Connect to data sources - data warehousing
3. Link different data sources - data warehousing
4. Aggregate and filter data (queries) - data warehousing
5. Build data tables and graphics - reporting
6. Prepare graphs and diagrams - presentation
7. Mathematic and statistics - data analytics
8. Algorithms and programming - data analytics
9. Scripting and automation - computation
10. Full compatibility and universal access - compatibility
11. Available knowledge and support - know-how
12. Easy-to-use - know-how

This is really good taking into account Excel is a basic tool included in Office that almost everyone in every company has.