Breaking Free from Excel: Starting Your Business Intelligence Journey

Many organisations are aware of the value that is in their data, yet find it a struggle to access relevant, accurate and consistent information when they need it. Key business systems provide rudimentary reporting but to uncover further insights you bring the data into Excel. This often means that your data is scattered, inconsistent, and hard to use for actionable insights. But what if there was a better way? In this post, we highlight the hidden costs of Excel dependency and show how you can build a solid data foundation for business success. 

Often key personnel understand the Excel models, the processes involved, and the business rules and calculations applied, but by building the solution in Excel, it leaves a high level of dependency and risk on certain individuals. If this sounds familiar, you may be asking yourself: how can I move away from the reliance on Excel? Are there other ways to mitigate the risk whilst creating an environment that turns your data into an asset, not a liability? 

Often, Excel holds the blueprint for how an organisation can turn data into usable information. However, relying on manual processes and Excel can quickly lead to data errors, inefficiencies, and confusion about which numbers are correct. Fortunately, there are many tried and tested approaches that can automate data flow processes and mitigate the risk of the manual intervention and dependencies.

A key challenge in this case is the lack of dedicated Business Intelligence (BI) resources or BI knowhow. Reporting is typically handled by staff who may not have specialised knowledge in data analysis or BI and it is often an extra task piled onto already busy workloads. The lack of dedicated capacity means data isn’t treated as an asset, leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. Without expertise to focus on improving data processes, it’s difficult to make meaningful strides in using data to make better decisions. 

Starting a BI journey doesn’t mean jumping straight to sophisticated software and tools. It begins with establishing a solid data foundation. This means thinking about where you can achieve quick benefits (where to start) and ensuring that data is collected consistently and organised systematically.

Small steps like standardising data entry processes, ensuring data is stored in one central place, and introducing basic reporting standards can create a big impact, whilst mitigating risks and starting to build a single version of the truth.

When planning a BI journey, focussing on what is valuable is crucial. There are many tasks that can be completed but don’t support your organisational goals. It is useful to build an overarching roadmap that has a strong lens on prioritisation. Understanding what essential data can help support key business decisions, creating a simple document that identifies your existing data sources, who owns the data source, which data source hold your essential data and definitions of those key data elements is a sound starting point for managing your data.

For companies still in the early stages of their data practices, the idea of change might seem daunting. By focusing on foundational efforts, organisations can gradually move towards a system where data becomes a strategic asset rather than a headache. 

For more information visit our Business Intelligence page

Or get in touch to to discuss your organisations BI journey.

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