November 18, 2003

Embracing Excel

Microsoft Excel is a much-beloved desktop tool for business intelligence, yet many people want to contain its use or replace it

by Philip Russom

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Retrofitting Excel

Instead of replacing Excel, the goal should be to make Excel an enterprise-scope tool. Before this can happen, Excel must be retrofitted to address the enterprise, despite its lineage as a non-networked desktop productivity tool. The challenge is to connect Excel to enterprise data via a server and complete the Excel loop so users can collaborate with colleagues via Excel spreadsheets.

Enterprise connectivity for Excel. Server-based vendor platforms for BI offer varying levels of support for Excel. Ideally, a BI platform would treat Excel spreadsheets as if they were report templates, in that enterprise data is maintained elsewhere, and the data content of the spreadsheet report is refreshed on a scheduled or requested basis. This would automate the inevitable "export to Excel" that business users demand, but does so in a repeatable way with data integrity and fewer opportunities for operator error. The BI platform serves as the single source of enterprise data for Excel users to avoid silos and dueling spreadsheets. Furthermore, this automation helps increase productivity and accuracy among business users through a data management strategy that IT can implement and maintain.

Completing the Excel loop for collaboration. Although enterprise connectivity is largely about getting data into Excel in a controlled and repeatable fashion, getting it back to the BI platform is equally important. After all, business users want to work in familiar and productive Excel, and then share their valuable results with colleagues without losing Excel's value-adds (formatting, formulas, or charts). Although many vendor products support data outbound for Excel (through comma-delimited files or the generation of an Excel .XLS binary file), very few yet support inbound Excel information. The need for collaboration via Excel spreadsheets is so imperative among business users that they will continue the worst practice of one-way exports to Excel (followed by the uncontrolled distribution of corporate data in spreadsheets) unless you give them a controlled, server-based method for collaboration by completing the bidirectional Excel loop.

Connecting Excel to enterprise data and completing the Excel loop are largely the responsibility of BI vendors, yet most denied this for years. Instead of supporting Excel from the BI platform, the vendor tells IT to take Excel away from the business users and replace it with the vendor's expensive client tool. In the last year or two, however, many vendors have come out of denial and started supporting Excel more deeply, including Actuate Corp., Applix Inc., Crystal Decisions Inc., Informatica, Juice Software Inc., Microsoft (Reporting Services), Panorama Software Corp., and others. BI platforms that export to Excel are now ubiquitous, yet few complete the Excel loop. The incomplete loop is a severe technology challenge, because neither Excel nor BI platforms were designed for this loop. The incomplete Excel loop will continue for some time as the major barrier to using Excel as a BI tool on an enterprise scale.

Embrace Excel Selectively and Controllably

In closing, let's be clear on a few points. Excel as a BI tool is not for all BI users. Decision makers in finance departments seem to be the best profile, although business users in other departments (such as sales, marketing, and operations) are also good candidates. Many end users truly need a dedicated BI tool — not Excel — and Excel for non-BI uses is not under consideration here.

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