Excel is one of the best business tools ever made.
It’s fast. It’s flexible. Everyone knows how to use it.
You can open a new spreadsheet in five minutes and solve a problem without an IT project, an implementation or training.
That is exactly why companies stay on Excel longer than they should.
The problem doesn’t start when you use Excel. It starts when Excel, almost without anyone noticing, becomes your company’s central system.
Sales has its own spreadsheet. The warehouse has another. Purchasing has a third. Finance has a fourth. The managing director gets a fifth, where someone has tried to merge the other four.
The business still runs, but every month it takes longer to work out whose numbers are right.
Excel works well as long as the answer depends on one spreadsheet
Things get complicated when the answer depends on five people.
- How much stock do we have right now?
- What is reserved and what is on order?
- What is our real margin?
- What did we sell today at the remote location?
- Which customers are late with payment?
- What does this product actually cost us?
If the answer to a simple business question starts with “Let me just check with…”, it’s worth looking at how your data is organised.
Management rarely needs the number next Friday. It needs it now.
Spreadsheet errors are not the exception
Spreadsheet errors are a well-researched problem. Professor Raymond Panko of the University of Hawaii has spent years collecting the results of field audits of business spreadsheets:
- in the five most rigorous audits, significant errors were found in 91% of the 55 spreadsheets reviewed,
- across a wider set of nine studies, errors were found in 84% of 163 spreadsheets.
That doesn’t mean “91% of all Excel files are wrong”. It means that complex operational spreadsheets are very hard to keep error-free as the number of formulas, users and links between them grows.
Even a perfectly accurate spreadsheet has one limitation: it doesn’t know that something happened in another department. Someone has to pass the information on. That is where delays and double entry come from.
5 signs your company has outgrown spreadsheets
1. You have several versions of the same truth
Sales_final.xlsx
Sales_final2.xlsx
Sales_FINAL_new.xlsx
The joke is familiar because the situation is familiar. When several people work with the same information in different files, the question is no longer where the file is, but which number reflects what is actually happening.
An ERP system works differently. Sales, purchasing, the warehouse, production and finance all use the same connected data. You don’t stitch five pictures of the business together afterwards. You work from one.
2. You enter the same data more than once
The customer exists in sales, so you enter them again for invoicing. The item exists in the warehouse, so you enter it into another record. An order arrives by email, so someone retypes it into a spreadsheet.
Every re-entry is one more step and one more chance for a mistake. That is why an ERP system keeps partners, items and warehouses as single master records, not several versions of the same information.
3. The numbers are correct, but they’re from yesterday
A company can have good data and still make decisions too late.
If a report needs someone to first collect data from several sources, check it, reconcile it and only then send it to management, the company is really looking at the past.
In day-to-day operations, the gap between “How much did we have?” and “How much do we have now?” can be large. The value of a real-time view isn’t a nice dashboard. The value is that the decision no longer waits for a manually assembled report.
4. The company depends on the person who built the spreadsheet
Almost every company has one of these spreadsheets. It works perfectly. It has formulas nobody else understands. The person who built it knows exactly where everything goes.
As long as they’re at work.
A system shouldn’t depend on what one person knows. The process should be built into the way the company works.
5. Growth adds admin faster than it adds revenue
A new location. A new warehouse. More items, more transactions, more people.
If every new part of the business needs a new spreadsheet and another manual check, the company’s admin doesn’t grow alongside the business. It catches up with it.
Don’t introduce ERP because Excel is “bad”
ERP isn’t a reward a company earns by growing. Nor does every process need to move into a large system. Excel will still be excellent for analysis, quick calculations and planning.
There is only one question:
Are you using Excel as a tool, or as infrastructure?
If stock, sales, purchasing, costs and key management decisions depend on spreadsheets, you may not need a better spreadsheet. You may need a different system.
ERP doesn’t start with buying software
ERP starts with understanding your processes:
- How do you work today?
- Where is data first entered, who uses it and where is it retyped?
- Where do delays happen?
- Which reports are really needed?
- What should be automated, and what shouldn’t?
That is why TQORE doesn’t treat implementing XARPA ERP as installing a ready-made program with a list of features. The first step is a review of your business and a Business Blueprint (BBP). This is a document that defines the processes, the functionality you need and the scope of the implementation before you get a quote. That way both you and we know exactly what is being implemented before the project starts.
A bad process won’t become a good one just because you moved it into an ERP. It will just become a digital bad process.
XARPA ERP
XARPA ERP is business software for companies in Republika Srpska. It connects sales, purchasing, the warehouse, production and finance, and gives you a real-time view of turnover, stock, costs, margins and price differences. Remote locations and retail stores connect to head office.
A well set-up ERP starts long before the first click in the software.
→ Book a consultation for XARPA ERP
Frequently asked questions
What is an ERP system?
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is business software that connects sales, purchasing, the warehouse, production and finance into one system with shared data. Data is entered once and is available to everyone who needs it.
Does ERP completely replace Excel?
No. ERP takes over as the central record of the business. Excel stays useful for analysis, planning and ad hoc calculations.
Is ERP only for large companies?
No. Company size isn’t the best criterion. What matters more is how much your business relies on manually connecting data from several sources: several warehouses or points of sale, wholesale, distribution, production or selling services.
How long does an ERP implementation take?
It depends on your processes and the scope. That is exactly why, before the quote, we assess the current state and prepare a Business Blueprint that defines the scope precisely.
What does XARPA ERP maintenance cover?
Maintenance covers existing functionality, alignment with changes in legislation, new versions and bug fixes. New functionality is contracted separately.
Sources
- Raymond R. Panko, Audits of Operational Spreadsheets, Spreadsheet Research (SSR): https://panko.com/ssr/Audits.html