When You Are a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail
You know what’s great?
A hammer.
It is versatile, easy to use, and comes in handy in various situations. Using it involves no rocket science. There’s no learning curve. All you need is brute force to get the job done.
But, is brute force really needed for everything? Do you HAVE to bring out your hammer ALL the time? What if your computer needs fixing? Do you think smashing it with a hammer will get the job done? Definitely not.
And if your windshield needs a quick wash? Will you wield your trusty old hammer and bang the thing into shards? Of course not. Doing this will cause more harm than good. Actually, it will cause all harm and no good. And you know it. So, you won’t do it.
Knowing how to use a hammer doesn’t make it your go-to tool for everything, right? Makes perfect sense.
Then why do you use THAT ONE tool for your business situations, whether it fits the situation or not and regardless of the potential negative consequences, just because it is easy?
Microsoft Excel: Your Go-to Tool
MS Excel is quite the Stalwart in the business world, particularly among small business owners. And it is not hard to see why.
Excel is widely available and easily accessible. It comes pre-installed on many computers and offers minimal friction during setup.
This is one of the reasons why many business owners turn to Excel for most of their business problems.
Besides that, Excel is easy to use. Almost every employee inside a small business office knows how to enter data and perform simple calculations using the spreadsheet software. Even if there is a complete novice in the office, Excel does not have a steep learning curve, and inputting basic data into simple cells is not rocket science.
Most importantly, Excel plays an impressive role as the jack of all trades. This one application can get almost everything done.
Need to build a budget? Trust Excel to do it.
Have a client list to track? Let Excel do it.
Need to monitor the status of your projects? Excel seems built for that.
With its versatility, Excel can help you get done with numerous tasks. But is the outcome always favorable for your business?
Using a hammer to smash your windshield would still clear the view from the driver’s seat. But is this the result you want? Not really.
Why Can’t Excel Be the Best Solution?
Excel with its versatile features will get the job done. It will build your budget, hold your employee data, and help you maintain a client list. However since the tool is not built for many of the advanced functions you may have to perform using all this data sooner or later, the tool will fall short at some point, bringing costly damage to your business.
We saw a shining example of using Excel for tasks outside of its domain back in 2008. In the dreadful year of financial upheaval, Barclays ended up spending millions of dollars on purchasing unwanted contracts. The expensive mistake happened due to the company using Excel to maintain a record of all the contracts it wanted to buy and the ones it wasn’t interested in. Something Excel is not built to do.
But why is Excel not fit for every job?
Reason #1: Excel is Error-prone
Human errors are common. That’s what left Barclays short of millions of dollars in 2008.
When you use Excel to store and manage your business data, your database is more vulnerable to human errors. The integrity of your data can be corrupted when you are entering the data. Or your data can become inaccurate over time after it has been updated multiple times.
Since an Excel sheet usually comprises hundreds, if not thousands of cells, the errors may go unnoticed and impact the decisions you make based on the erroneous data.
Reason # 2: Excel Can Slow Down When Holding Large Amounts of Data
Your business is small right now. It has a limited amount of data that sits perfectly well in an Excel spreadsheet.
But your business will eventually grow. And when that happens, the volume of data it thrives on will expand as well. Since Excel was not built to store huge volumes of data, therefore it will start to slow down, lag, and take longer to accomplish even simple tasks.
This sloth-like performance will hinder business productivity and threaten to drag your efficiency down.
Reason #3: Privacy and Security Concerns
No one wants to steal the basic database you have built to store your small business budget. Sure. But what about client and employee data? Don’t you want to make sure that stays safe? And those regulatory requirements that necessitate fool-proof data security? You want to ensure your business is compliant with all those regulations.
Yes, you can lock your Excel spreadsheet using a password. However, Excel has weaker encryption compared to other dedicated database systems. This makes the spreadsheet application more vulnerable to unauthorized access and can compromise the security of the data within your database.
These security shortcomings make Excel unfit for regulated environments and can make it difficult for your business to remain compliant.
Limited Data Visualization Capabilities
Pretty graphs and aesthetic pie charts are a possibility in Excel. But not when you are dealing with voluminous data.
Sure Excel can make excellent graphs and charts when you are handling static data. But once your data begins to change, as it inevitably will, you will come face-to-face with Excel’s inherent inability to support analysis of dynamic data. .
This is why, Excel cannot be the best tool to make meaningful business reports that help you analyze and visualize the impact of changing data.
Dealing with all of these business challenges as if they were nails and trying to resolve them with brute force by using Excel like a hammer can result in some pretty damaging consequences for your business. Remember Barclays million-dollar splurge?
And it makes no sense for a growth-driven business owner to take the risk with Excel simply because that’s what they know in-house. Especially when there are other tools readily available and more capable of tackling their challenges and not just helping them avoid difficult business consequences but actually helping them grow.
Microsoft Access – The Right Solution for Your Growing Business Needs
Microsoft Access makes up for most of Excel’s shortcomings. It is a powerful database management system that offers many features. These features make it the best tool to support your business’s growing data needs. Some of these features include:
Data Validation
Access comes with built-in data validation features. This helps you ensure the accuracy of the data. Moreover, it allows data entry through forms. Using forms also minimizes the chances of entering erroneous data and ensures data entry won’t harm the integrity of the database.
Better Data Storage
Access is a database management system. Storing data is one of its primary applications. So, it does it well.
Your Access database can easily store huge volumes of data while also maintaining its integrity. Moreover, you can always query whatever data you need without fearing a lag in performance, a privilege you may not have when using Excel.
Powerful Analysis
Why do you store data? So you can use it for your business later on.
We live in an era where data is the most powerful currency. It is now perhaps even more valuable than oil. And its importance continues to grow!
The reason data is so vital today is that it guides business decisions with precision. And this happens when businesses can analyze data and drive meaningful answers from their datasets.
Sure, Excel has some data analysis capabilities. But Access is better equipped to help you perform advanced data analysis, especially when data is changing, so you can understand your business’ performance and drive business growth.
Better Collaboration Capabilities
Businesses often require multiple users to work on the same spreadsheets. Access comes with powerful collaboration capabilities that allow multiple users to edit a database simultaneously if it is stored in a shared network folder.
This feature makes Access more valuable for teams that collaborate frequently over data and removes frictions in the workflow that may arise when using a spreadsheet application like Excel.
A downside of Access is that it is not as easy to use as Excel. You may have to take the time out to learn it yourself or hire a Microsoft Access Expert in NJ. This may seem resource-intensive at first, but it can generate promising results because
When You Are a Hammer, Considering Everything a Nail Can Be Costly
Just because you are adept with Excel and know your way around it does not mean that you should wield it like a hammer and use it for everything in your business.
There is no denying Excel’s unmatched versatility. But the fact that Excel has some truly significant shortcomings when pitched in many common business scenarios can’t be denied either. There are many other, more efficient, and dedicated tools built specifically to handle these scenarios.
Hire Small Business Computer Support in NJ and Let Access Experts Do Their Job
Microsoft Access has lots of features. And when used the right way, these features can supercharge your business and help it set new benchmarks. But you need to know your way around the tool to use it properly.
In case you don’t have the resources to commit to learning MS Access and becoming an expert, it is better to trust Microsoft Access experts with it.
At Landau Consulting, we can connect you with a Microsoft Access expert in NJ to help you build a secure and robust database brimming with information you can trust. We can help migrate your Excel data safely to your new Access database and empower your business with the true capabilities of MS Access.
Not everything becomes a nail if you know how to use a hammer. Similarly, not every business issue is an Excel problem simply because you and the team know your way around it. Sometimes, you need a dedicated database management system and a team of experts to handle your business challenges rather than spreadsheet software to get the best outcome.
Let us help your business tap the potential of data with a sophisticated and safe database. Learn more about our Database Management Services at https://landauconsulting.com/data-management/ or contact us directly at https://landauconsulting.com/contact.