Every company has one: that one crucial Excel file an entire process depends on. The calculation, the planning, the margin model. It exists because your way of working simply doesn't fit into off-the-shelf software.
That spreadsheet was once the best option. But a spreadsheet isn't designed for scalability or teamwork. And that's starting to show.
Some spreadsheets have grown into monsters with complex business logic that only one or two people understand. If that "Excel expert" leaves? You have a massive operational risk. A single point of failure for a business-critical process.
On top of that, these same spreadsheets often serve as a bridge to transform data between systems: from CRM to ERP, from ERP to invoicing. Employees are reduced to manually copying data from screen A to screen B. While those data flows are fully automatable today.
Holding on to the Mega-Excel isn't a cost-neutral choice. It's a creeping investment in inefficiency and risk. Manual input errors are eating into your margin. Linear growth instead of exponential, because your overhead has to scale with your output. And processes that are fundamentally not ready for AI automation, simply because the data is locked inside a spreadsheet.
