Replacing Excel spreadsheets with web applications
How to transform unwieldy Excel processes into scalable web applications that improve business efficiency and data management.
It's common for businesses to build up processes that are managed using Excel spreadsheets, however they can become unwieldy and inefficient.
By creating a web application to replace your Excel spreadsheet processes, you can use the power of web technologies to improve your business.
Spreadsheets must rank highly on a list of the most important inventions of the computer age. Since VisiCalc was created for the Apple II in 1979, spreadsheets have made business possible.
Spreadsheets provide essential functions for running a business. They are useful for computing and validating numbers accurately, for creating quick proof-of-concept models, and for organising and tracking information. Excel spreadsheets can become embedded into business processes, forming crucial pieces of business operations.
However, there often comes a time when a spreadsheet is no longer fit for purpose, for a variety of reasons.
Benefits of web-based apps over spreadsheets
Replacing a spreadsheet process with a web application can bring a number of benefits:
- Restrict the users, offering different permission levels and tracking their actions
- Integrate the processes and data used in the spreadsheet with other business systems
- Access the data or perform the processes remotely over the internet
- Turn the process into an offering or service you can resell to your own clients
All of these limitations of spreadsheets can be addressed by building a web application to replace them. In some cases it may even be possible to use off-the-shelf software, but create new data flows via APIs or other interfaces.
Web applications can be built using an Excel spreadsheet as a model, reverse engineering complex spreadsheets to replicate and improve on their functionality.