Ten reasons not to use spreadsheets to implement your scorecards

While spreadsheets are appropriate tools for certain tasks, implementation of scorecards through spreadsheet will often fail because...

1. Spreadsheets are such that they incent users to focus on style as opposed to content.
   Executives often enter in “the-most-beautiful” graph contest and sometimes become experts at presenting the data in their own special ways. True scorecard solutions focus managers on the true, pre-agreed Key Performance Indicators and enforce data and causal analysis, enabling management teams to perform at their best, removing the bells and whistles from the equation.
2. Spreadsheets take time to build.
   Creating and maintaining spreadsheet is time consuming. Placing the data, creating graphs and dashboards is a long a process. While reporting is a management activity, you do not want your executives to spend time in secretarial work. The right tool will be simple and fast to access, with built-in yet easily customizable reports and dashboards.
3. Spreadsheets are not designed for collaborative effort and do not foster teamwork.
   Business objectives are often shared between team members with common targets and projects influencing the same results. The right solution must allow users to share data instantly while implementing proper security schemes. The right solution must allow data access anywhere at anytime.
4. Spreadsheets while being very flexible do leave room for inconsistencies and errors.
   Individuals from a management team will come-up with their own format and style and eventually spreadsheet scorecards and reports are so inconsistent that only the authors will really be able to navigate quickly the results. A good scorecard solution will provide templated formats that the entire team can learn to use and take advantage of.
5. Spreadsheets are not designed for the mobile or multi-site world.
   They quickly become impractical when the scorecard system becomes “management by quick emails” solution. A good solution will allow management teams to access the strategy and its current results over the Web and from any device.
6. Spreadsheets are not really designed for data mining.
   While they often feature enough functions to query and massage data, they very quickly become impractical. Organizations need to quickly analyze their strategic, operational and tactical data and data mine collected information. A good solution will be database-driven where queries can be executed quickly, trends detected and reports generated swiftly to facilitate analytical work.
7. Spreadsheets do not have built-in data retention or data versioning.
   It usually takes lots of manual work and “copy and paste” to actually retain previous data-sets, making it often impractical use. Management teams need to access previous data set and quickly distinguish between old and current data. A good solution will retain and track data changes and allow easy comparisons and reporting on it
8. Spreadsheets are not very good tools to manage content changes.
   It is often hard to see and understand quickly the changes made between 2 versions and often forces to read through the entire spreadsheet again. Strategic changes or strategy execution changes must be accessible and communicated very well to prevent misunderstandings. A good tool will allow its users to be notified of important changes in real-time.
9. Spreadsheets are not integrated in the sense that they often cannot carry all the necessary elements of a strategic plan, business objectives, measures, programs and accountability framework.
   A good solution will provide a fully integrated solution with clear mapping between the various components of the strategy and its execution.
10. Spreadsheets do not have built-in workflow management and therefore cannot go easily through approval or escalation cycles other than through error-prone, confusing and time consuming emails.
    Elements of the strategy and its execution must have clear status at any point of time. A good solution will allow users to define workflow, approval and notification process as part of the tool.