10 Key Points – Why Spreadsheet Automation?

 Point 6 of 10 – Spreadsheet Automation Can Reduce Your Carbon Footprint….

Use of Spreadsheet Automation can offer significant advantages to the environment compared with other approaches to management Information.  These can be summarised in a number of key points –

• Compared with a BI approach and many other reporting solutions which rely on a separate reporting database, there is no  need to purchase, install and manage one or more additional servers.  Spreadsheet Automation allows users to extract and present, in Excel, live data directly from their Business Systems.
   
• Capitalising on the typical user’s experience and strong preference to Excel, Spreadsheet Automation requires much less training, user support, time and cost to get up to speed.  With the preconfigured components available, user written outputs can be available on Day

• With Spreadsheet Automation, there is no need to learn or use VB or SQL to create user friendly reports

• Spreadsheet Automation users can use preconfigured components for over 40 of the major Business Systems and can share other client’s “good” data retrieval queries on the cloud based repository allows for sharing of ideas and resulting efficiencies.
   
• By Spreadsheet Automation users creating, amending and managing their own reports, there is a large reduction in the need for resource hungry external resources.  The amount of user time required to create their own reports using Spreadsheet Automation is considerably less than the alternative of having to explain, document, test, correct and validate reports created by others – never mind the  additional software, expenses administration and management costs incurred.
   
• As business needs change over time, Spreadsheet Automation users can simply change and test their own, relatively simple reports. In alternative reporting environments, the solution/ database is deliberately over engineered to cater for all foreseen change of requirements.  This increases the complexity and timescales of the project, and hugely inflates the external and internal costs to analyse, specify, develop, test and validate – yet invariably requires design correction during finalisation, fails to satisfy subsequent ad-hoc needs and also needs continual support and management.  Later changes can be prohibitively expensive. Spreadsheet Automation provides a simpler, low environmental impact, incremental approach to reporting.
   
• Using Spreadsheet Automation to answer unexpected, sudden and urgent ad-hoc reporting demands can reduce the amount of time required to answer these management requests  which would otherwise require out-of-hours’ work and manual methods.
   
• Spreadsheet Automation can be used to combine data from disparate applications within the same output and hence streamlines reporting and prevents unnecessary duplication or rekeying of data.  This is particularly relevant in the case of Add-ons or during implementation and upgrades where bespoke solutions are required.  Amending existing Spreadsheet Automation reports to be fed off new business system changes or add-ons can be easily accomplished with minimal cost or delay and reduce manual consolidation.
   
• Where a user has an established management report within Excel currently populated via rekey or cut and paste, use of wizards provided by Spreadsheet Automation can embed the links to the live database so existing reports can be refreshed from Business System data at the push of a button. 
   
• Spreadsheet Automation can reduce the amount of paper ( trees cut down ) consumed to  generate hard copy reports and eliminate the need for “detail” reports by producing summaries ( or graphics ) by incorporating drill-down to detail from Excel reports themselves.
   
• Automating the refresh and distribution of management information using Spreadsheet Automation - direct by email or to intranet - can save paper and hours of work requesting, collecting and distributing hard copy.  Similarly, simply and automatically changing just one cell within Excel can result in multiple departmental reports being refreshed and emailed (  as pdf  ) to specific managers.  Or these managers can be sent emails containing spreadsheets to allow their own drilldowns.
   
• Use of Spreadsheet Automation to produce reports containing live information, rather than waiting for a batch ( overnight ) process to complete drastically reduces the number of days needed at Period End.  This alerts and allows management to take corrective action sooner and thereby increases company efficiency and reduces environmental implications.

• Elimination of batch updates of reporting databases reduces the amount of downtime ( or expensive alternatives)  required to perform batch processes, essential housekeeping and system management. 

If you would like an informal, no obligation discussion about any of these points, please contact Excelogy Ltd.  we don’t bite  ……

GO GREEN – Employ Spreadsheet Automation

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