8 ways to elevate Excel planning

Every project in Excel starts with entering data. That data often comes from disparate systems that individual teams use as part of their processes, such as finance, sales, human resources (HR), marketing, supply chain, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG). Finance teams are tasked with collecting and updating all relevant data each time any one of these systems is updated. This is incredibly time consuming, especially given that executive teams rely on those data sources to provide actionable insights that mitigate risk and uncover critical opportunities.

Automatic loading processes from any system unify planning for teams across the organization. Current and historical data from all source systems should be up to date and accessible in a centralized solution.

It happens to every Excel user: you validate the model and check the formula, but the numbers are incorrect. The sum formula did not include the full range, and the VLOOKUP function returned the wrong results. Just one manual change can create a repetitive error that affects multiple spreadsheets.

Cross-organizational data must be governed and managed from a central location. This prevents duplication and missing datapoints. The same goes with formulas. Using a centralized platform as a single source of truth keeps the data consistent and allows updates to appear for all users simultaneously with the click of a button.

Scenario planning is an essential step in the budget approval process. However, with Excel acting as both a database and a calculation engine, creating comparisons between different assumptions and scenarios requires an enormous amount of time, preparation, and manipulation. Teams often spend time duplicating dozens of spreadsheets just to simulate one scenario.

Machine learning, predictive forecasting, and other AI tools are replacing traditional scenario planning methods, enabling always-on forecasting and scenarios to drive actionable insights and confident decision-making. Having business logic centralized within one platform also enables real-time calculations and easy updates.

Templates in Excel are manually prepared, collected, and shared with other teams across the organization, which inevitably leads to version control and collaboration challenges. Budget owners end up circulating more than one version of their insights. Different insights and feedback about data within working drafts are rarely consolidated in final reports and presented to executive management, so they don’t end up getting the full story. There simply isn’t a single, streamlined data source.

When working within a single cloud-based platform, data is captured instantly, and users can collaborate on different versions while keeping audit trails and comments intact.

Excel cannot manage workflows or provide process control when data is copied and shared multiple times. Planning often requires a top-down approach for setting targets and a bottom-up approach for data collection. Users such as regional sales managers typically start with an empty spreadsheet for planning with guidelines. Those users then have to input their data, submit the data, and obtain approval or rejection, all while meeting very specific standards. Excel is not built to manage those workflows. Additionally, it is impossible to pre-populate targets in Excel, which means users must start their planning from scratch.

When workflows are fully embedded in a planning solution, it brings invaluable order and clarity. Approvals and data locks are also advantageous. Solutions that enable automatic data allocation mean bottom-up planning does not have to start from scratch every time.

As geopolitical tensions and cybersecurity threats increase, protecting sensitive data is paramount. Spreadsheets used for planning and reporting often contain confidential and sensitive information, and pose critical compliance risks if they are shared more broadly during the planning process. Employees’ personal data is protected by law, and organizations can violate certain regulations if forecasting data becomes exposed.

To comply with security standards, planning solutions must provide templates with customized sharing controls and access levels. This helps organizations gather simultaneous inputs in a centralized system while limiting access to the right data for the right people for the right reasons.

Excel and PowerPoint are common tools used to create management reports, but they have limited capabilities for deep data analysis, executive reports, and dynamic reporting. The data volume is either too massive to share, or only small pieces can be shared, which means executive teams cannot see the complete picture. This limits visibility and the ability to dig deep into the data. With the advanced technologies that continue to emerge, executives expect a digitized solution.

Visualizations help bring data to life. Simply making dashboards accessible to stakeholders across the organization breaks down silos and enhances visibility by providing cross-organizational insights. This means management and other stakeholders can analyze and react quickly to information on their laptop or mobile device, wherever they are. Reporting and planning are seamlessly connected, allowing the system to create proactive alerts to provide more clarity on the complete picture.

Excel struggles to be a multidimensional tool, forcing users to work with single department reports rather than templates. A mid-size organization with 10 product lines, 10 regions, and 10 cost centers can quickly exceed 10,000 spreadsheets per year, not including drafts and simulations. Additionally, making changes to a single template means updating dozens of spreadsheets individually – a process vulnerable to error.

Platforms that model data with multidimensional cubes enable users to work with templates rather than individual or departmental reports. Integrating different data sources at the application level increases efficiency across budgeting, planning, and forecasting. This enhances the Excel experience and can help guide an organization’s digital transformation journey without having to abandon the familiar Excel environment.