Think Microsoft Excel will become obsolete (remember Lotus 123?) and will be taken over by some other new generation spreadsheets? Excel has been around for almost 3 decades and that’s older than some of you. They have been at the forefront of data entry, analyzing and managing resources and finances in businesses across various industries. However, in the last decade, there has been increasing competition from Google Sheets (Apple Numbers what?). In an era where everything is about collaboration, Google Sheets does have an advantage over Excel. But Microsoft is slowly catching up in this aspect, with the latest introduction of Microsoft Office 365, there have been efforts to increase collaboration with the use of OneDrive and it’s worth mentioning that Microsoft now offers free use of excel on Excel Web as well.
Having said that, here are 5 reasons why Excel will remain to be a big bull in the spreadsheet market.
1. A STRONG FOOTHOLD
Microsoft Office and essentially Microsoft Excel has grown to be a staple in many established organizations and governments. Unless you’re a techy startup or coming from the design and creative industry, chances are your company owns PCs. The fact that Microsoft Office Suite comes hand in hand with your Windows, makes it easily accessible and low maintenance costs for the companies. For big, traditional companies (and governments), there will always be a slow pick up when it comes to making digital changes!
2. FLEXIBLE, MORE ADVANCED FUNCTIONS & FEATURES
The lead time that Microsoft gets from being pioneers in the spreadsheet world means they have more time to build functions and features into their arsenal. Whatever calculation you need to do, Excel probably has that function. If you’re doing some serious number crunching or looking into creating automation with macros, Excel is the way to go. Not only can it handle the complexity of your models, it’s flexibility also means that you can use Excel to grow into a full blown Business Intelligence (BI) tool. Serious spreadsheet pros will definitely vouch for Excel.
3. LET THE NUMBERS TALK..
If you work on developing financial or economic models with serious calculation formula and references, Excel definitely has the upper hand. To put things into perspective, Excel can handle 1,048,576rows by 16,384 columns and that makes to 17,179,869,184 cells, that’s 17 Billions cells. Google sheets on the other hand, handles up to 10 million cells . Having said that it also depends whether your computer has enough memory to perform on such big datasets. But if you’re looking to collect lunch orders from your colleagues, it’s ok, Google Sheets does the job.
4. BIG LOYAL COMMUNITY
Excel has established its knowledge base and it’s easy to get help or support on the internet. They simply love to help people! They are a hardcore excel bunch who even organize Excel competitions amongst them in the style of Food Network’s Chopped reality tv show. And if that’s not enough there are World Championship too for students http://www.moschampionship.com/ and professionals https://www.modeloff.com/ alike. Suffice to say, excel has some serious fanbase. If Microsoft kills Excel, they’re gonna end up with a mob of angry Excel devotees.
5. SIMPLICITYIN TRACKING & ANALYSING
Everyone uses spreadsheet, be it Excel or Google Sheets. It is at the core of data entry and the most basic tracking and analytics program for users. Accountants, travel planners, researchers, marketing content analysts, investment bankers, you name it, they all use it. An art collector probably tracks his inventories in a spreadsheet. Heck, even artists themselves use Excel.
So, it’s not too late to level up your excel skills. After all, who does not want to work more efficiently on the program they spend most of your hours on? Plus, having advanced skill in excel is a major plus point on your resume. Data analytics is ranked to be among the top skills required to be relevant in this modern age. Everyone is expected to create value out of the data that’s presented to them. If statistical modelling, Python and all those data sciency stuff seems a little too far fetched for you, start producing descriptive and diagnostic analysis where you can do it with Excel.
