The humble Excel Spreadsheets have been a trusted partner of HR professionals across the globe since its advent in ‘70s where it graduated in form and brand nomenclature starting with the initial VisiCalc, SuperCalc to improvised Multiplan, Lotus 1-2-3 and the very monopolistic Microsoft Excel. Whether it is attendance, payroll or leave management HR function gracefully progressed from paper records to excel sheets. Did it work? Well it did for some time, but not when it became increasingly evident that it has major lacunas, a reality which is surprisingly easy to ignore. So where is the epicenter of the issue with spreadsheets? One of the major drawbacks of Excel sheets lies in the fact that it is not sustainable for HR tasks that require complex correlations and real time analysis. Today a firm that uses Excel might have manageable employee strength and processes, but once the business operations expand, the use of spreadsheets becomes non-scalable. The other disadvantages of relying exclusively on excel sheets include compromise on the privacy of data and possibility of letting the information fall in wrong hands. Password protections don’t help as the files go through multiple hands at multiple levels. This makes any critical data highly prone to fraudulent use and worse even business losses. Not to mention the pain in consolidation that also sometimes leads to inaccurate status reporting considering there are various teams or departments involved. Testimony to the views expressed above is echoed in several organizational case studies that had to suffer losses in millions due to Excel Errors. We are sure you would be enlightened with the nuggets presented in the deck! As always we at CAKE HR would love to read your thoughts and feedback on this exciting topic. Feel free to share them in our comments section! :)

1. 8 Cons of using excel spreadsheets in hr
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition
Reasons why Excel may not be the best option for managing organizational workforce

2. Evolution of Spreadsheets - A quick timelineWhat Is Employee Appreciation

3. 1978 – VisiCalc: First ever electronic spreadsheet
Timely, formal or informal, expressed and appreciative acknowledgment of a person’s or team’s efforts above and beyond the call of duty or
reasonable expectations in the course of their professional endeavors, or behaviors and results which uphold the company’s goals and values.

4. 1980 – SuperCalc: Solution bundled with WordStar
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

5. 1982 – Multiplan: Early spreadsheet program by Microsoft
What Is Employee Appreciation

6. 1983 – Lotus 1-2-3: Improvised tool with charts & graphs
Timely, formal or informal, expressed and appreciative acknowledgment of a person’s or team’s efforts above and beyond the call of duty or
reasonable expectations in the course of their professional endeavors, or behaviors and results which uphold the company’s goals and values.

7. 1985 to present day: Progressive versions of Microsoft Excel made available
Timely, formal or informal, expressed and appreciative acknowledgment of a person’s or team’s efforts above and beyond the call of duty or
reasonable expectations in the course of their professional endeavors, or behaviors and results which uphold the company’s goals and values.

8. What’s behind Excel’s popularity?
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

9. The fact that it is free, readily available, configurable on basic machines and easily manageable for small business setups has backed its extensive use
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

10. Around 81% of the organizations use spreadsheets to supplement their Corporate Performance Management solutions
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

11. Does this imply it is the best solution for HR?
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

12. Probably Not. It is not geared to face the challenges posed by large well-established organizations with evolved HR processes and soaring employee strength
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

13. What are the major disadvantages of Using Excel In HR?
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

14. Reason #1 - Privacy Issues and Poor Built In Controls
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

15. You can hardly control the viewership of the data making it vulnerable to alterations. Not to forget, there are no checks to test the accuracy of data sources
getting pulled into the spreadsheetsEmployee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

16. Reason #2 - Prone to Human Errors
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

17. The reason why people love Excel is the scope for rework and manipulation. The chances of mistakes increase drastically when several versions of a spread-
sheet are saved by several people.
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

18. Reason #3 - Unfit for Dynamic Business Scenario
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

19. Excel is incapable of error proof knowledge transfer. If a person X leaves, then person Y has to apply his own interpretation when working with spread-
sheets.
Non-responsiveness to business agility leads to wastage of time, opportunity, productivity and competitive knowledge
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

20. Reason #4 - Doesn’t support automatic reporting
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

21. Manual nature of handling spreadsheets, makes scheduled delivery of standard reports to multiple users next to impossible. Tedious E-mail is the only way
out!
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

22. Reason #5 - Not Scalable
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

23. Data grows with organization. Managing huge databases on excel without slips and misses is a non existent case. Larger organizations need solu-
tions that can decipher complex connections and dependenciesEmployee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

24. Reason #6 - Hinders Quick Decision Making
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

25. Long drawn consolidation process with different versions of data and error checking mechanisms leads to handicap situation for business
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

26. Reason #7 - Teams and Excel don’t go together
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

27. Organizational activities are rarely individualistic. Excel in non-suitable for collaborative initiatives as there is no central database with real-time
accurate information
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

28. Reason #8 - A risky affair
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

29. Excel spreadsheets constituting too many formulas and cell references becomes prone to costly mistakes as there is hardly any documentation
available explaining the links with zero auto-correct features
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

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Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

31. Are we blowing the issue out of proportion? People have been using Excel for years now!– We don’t think so
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

32. Seemingly benign human errors have led to dramatic and horrific business losses!
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

33. Case #1 - The TransAlta Mistake
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

34. One of the biggest Canadian Power Generator in American Continent suffered a humungous loss of $24 million. Reason? You guess it right. Excel
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

35. TransAlta CEO, Steve Synder, reported that the losses was an outcome of simple copy paste error which went unnoticed prior to bid submission.
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

36. Result of the spreadsheet error – Company bought more US Power transmission Contracts at higher prices leading to the fiasco.
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

37. Case #2 – Centre for Regional Strategies
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

38. Messed up Excel sheet led the company incorrectly report that only 11 percent of New Century’s population above 25 years old held a bachelor’s
degree. The correct figure was 20 percent
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

39. How did it affect the company?
Botched up its reputation and credibility
How did it affect the region?
Placed New Century region below other areas like Nashville and Athens which were thought to be better educatedEmployee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

40. Case #3 – Dominion Transmission Inc.
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

41. The Natural Gas Provider reported incorrect figures of weekly Gas Storage resulting in false inflation of gas prices
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

42. The artificial price hike was estimated between $200 million and $1 billion. Consumers of the company sued it for this atrocious mistake
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

43. What was the reason behind this big goof up?
A naïve blunder of saving the excel sheet under same name for each weekly storage report. A classic case of oversight !
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

44. Case #4 – Fidelity’s Magellan Fund
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

45. The company had to face huge embarrassment when their estimation to make $4.32 per share proved to be a failure
Employee Appreciation & Productive Recognition

46. Culprit – Data Transfer among Excel Spreadsheets
The company accountant accidentally omitted the negative sign on the net capital loss of $1.3 billion treating it as net capital profit instead. All
this while taking Data from Sheet A to BWhat Is Employee Appreciation

47. Trivial Mistake with huge implications
Fidelity Fund’s estimate was off by a staggering $2.6 billion
What Is Employee Appreciation

48. After Thoughts
What Is Employee Appreciation

49. For those who still believe in the comfort of familiarity offered by Excel Spreadsheets, can suffer both - in the short term or long haul owing to its
offline and non-dynamic nature
What Is Employee Appreciation

50. World is moving towards internet and cloud based Business Intelligence Tools and Software that make life easier and organized for HR Commu-
nity
What Is Employee Appreciation

51. Final Strokes
What Is Employee Appreciation

52. Excel is a useful tool for simple data entry and basic analytical tasks
Sophisticated reporting and business analysis requires advanced software applications
Spreadsheets are for support. Not the be all end all of Business
What Is Employee Appreciation

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What Is Employee Appreciation