Qualico

Jasmin is a business analyst who recently started working for a manufacturer. Excited to explore opportunities for process improvement, she becomes familiar with the various processes and systems. Very quickly she notices how many spreadsheets are being used. Since the organization has an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, she expects fewer spreadsheets would be necessary. As she investigates further, she confirms that many of the spreadsheets are being used in place of the ERP system, which is underused. Having seen this phenomenon before, she knows exactly what to do next.

Spreadsheets are an invaluable business tool. They can be customized to fit the simplest of needs, such as a list of registrants for an event, to the very complex, such as a departmental budget with actual costs integrated in real time from an accounting system. Since their invention, spreadsheets have found their way onto most business and home computers.

However, spreadsheets, by their very nature, are decentralized, each maintaining its own set of standalone data. This can become a problem for organizations when the convenience and personal control of spreadsheets causes data to be shifted away from centralized corporate systems, such as an ERP system. For the purposes of this discussion, we will use the ERP system as a proxy for any corporate system that maintains centralized data.

The migration of data away from ERP systems and into spreadsheets can be small and unintentional. For instance, someone needs to manage a single piece of information that does not appear to have a home in the ERP system. So, a spreadsheet is created for this new information along with some related data taken from the ERP system. Over time, this spreadsheet becomes the more convenient and fuller source of truth, and double entry of data into the ERP system seems redundant and unnecessary.

 Rather than accepting reports that are manually generated from spreadsheets, leaders must insist that the source of truth is reports generated from ‘the system,’ either directly from the ERP system or through centralized reporting/BI tools, such as SSRS, PowerBI, or Sisense, to name a few 

So, some data is no longer entered into the ERP system. This will likely impact other users, but if they don’t investigate why things changed, they begin to lose trust in the ERP system and create spreadsheets of their own. Left unchecked, this cycle can cascade through the business and result in significant exodus of data from the ERP system. Over time, the business can lose trust in a perfectly good ERP system, as it is no longer trustworthy.

So, what does trusted data look like?

Think of the 4 C’s or C to the power of 4 (and we do mean power, because trusted data is a powerful thing!). Data must be:

• Correct - an accurate reflection of what it represents,

• Complete - all information that is required by all data consumers is entered,

• Current - entered in a timely enough manner for data consumers’ needs,

• Consistent - the above C’s are applied all the time.

These rules are critical to maintaining trusted data. The more they are broken, the less data will be trusted, leading to disengagement from the system and more investment in spreadsheets. Once trust is lost, it can be hard to rebuild. So, the question becomes: ‘How do we rebuild that trust?’ One answer is to start at the end - system reports.

However, simply making that declaration doesn’t fix the problem. Since data was shifted away from the ERP system and into spreadsheets, these system reports will initially not be correct. So, the process begins of identifying where a system report is wrong, finding the data point that is missing or incorrect in the ERP system, and creating a process for it to be entered (following the 4 C’s). This can be an arduous process, but the juice is worth the squeeze.

As system-generated reports start to become reliable and trusted, letting go of spreadsheets and their maintenance can yield significant efficiency gains. As well, data quality will likely increase as there are significantly more eyes on the centralized data than on the plethora of individual spreadsheets.

Having trusted data is well worth the effort, but getting there can require a significant organizational shift. To be successful:

• Executive Support - one of the critical success factors for any project is support from the top. Leaders must make it a visible and well-communicated priority.

• Timing – it will likely be a significant undertaking and there will never be a good time, so it’s a matter of finding the best time.

• Start Small - even one report at a time. It can be surprising how one change can positively impact other areas.

• Pick your Battles – Know when to stop. Perfection is the enemy of good enough. Some spreadsheets will continue to exist, and that’s ok. As Michael Porter famously said, "the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do."