Here are just a few examples of how businesses utilize well designed spreadsheets:

* Historical reporting of Sales, Marketing, Financial and Operational data

* Development of relatively complex bids involving lots of options and calculations

* Combining / aggregating data from multiple sources

* Cleaning up dirty data entered into other source systems

* Communicating business results to clients or other team members

 

Spreadsheets are relatively easy for the typical worker to create but all too often businesses start running into challenges with legacy spreadsheets for a variety of reasons:

* The employee that originally created the spreadsheet left the company and didn't leave behind enough documentation.

* The original goal of the spreadsheet evolved over time and the design became unwieldy.

* Employees are not skilled enough to build a highly functional spreadsheet.

* The amount of historical data in the spreadsheet has dramatically slowed down the spreadsheet update process.

* A lack of automation built into the spreadsheet.

 

We have seen many, many cases where the employee has a very good understanding of what they want the spreadsheet to accomplish but lack the skills to create it.