Survey: Spreadsheets still prevalent in financial processes

Regardless of how much the FinTech world criticizes manual spreadsheets, they’re still a reality for the majority of finance teams.

Almost two-thirds (64%) of companies still use spreadsheets in some way to support their payment processes, according to a recent survey from market research company International Data Corporation (IDC).

While companies might like to ditch manual spreadsheets for more automated processes, sometimes, that’s not a possible move. Whether it’s due to economic constraints or the fact that staffers are Excel pros and it simply works well, it’s safe to say manual spreadsheets will be around for some time to come.

Update and optimize spreadsheets

Of course, if your team’s going to use tried-and-true spreadsheet programs like Excel, you want them to do so efficiently.

It’d be smart to talk to your finance managers and verify their staffers have the latest version of Excel installed. (And, going forward, they should continue to look out for updates.)

If they haven’t updated the program for some time, they could be missing out on things like:

• new functions (like CONCAT, aka, a new version of CONCATENATE)
• more chart options (like map charts to display geographical data or funnel charts to display values across process stages)
• enhanced sharing (e.g., quickly inserting recent links, viewing/restoring changes in shared workbooks, saving files to recent folders faster), and
• developments in business analytics (e.g., publishing locally stored Excel files to Power BI for online viewing).

In addition, you’ll want to make sure staffers are regularly upping their skills and becoming more efficient with spreadsheets. That will save your company time and money.

For example, you could bring in an expert to host training session semi-annually to go over recent updates and more strategic functions, formulas and data analysis tips. You could also encourage staffers to regularly share their spreadsheet best practices for data entry, keyboard shortcuts, formatting and more.