Businesses analyze their past using Business Intelligence, but spreadsheet models are where they dream about the future.
Business Intelligence tools are wonderful. Dashboards allow businesses to keep an eye on their operations and the self-service nature of tools such as PowerBI, Tableau and Qlik allow end-users to quickly answer important business questions.
These insights — however — are inherently about the past. That’s what BI tools are all about: Being able to quickly filter, group, aggregate and sort records of data on things that have already happened.
Data science sometimes tries to cast an eye on the future by analyzing past trends and extending them into the future, often with quite sophisticated prediction methods.
But you can make all the regression models you want. If a business truly wants to change something that change is going to be modeled “by hand” using a spreadsheet.
At GRID, we are in a unique position to learn about this first hand. While many use our tool for reporting, building calculators or to create various tools for internal use, the use-cases where GRID has been the most transformational are high-stakes situations when businesses are planning or deciding on the future, such as:
- Fund raising
- Sales negotiations
- Product launches
- Pricing changes
- Re-orgs
- etc.
What these scenarios have in common is that someone has built a spreadsheet model, and it is important that other stakeholders deeply understand the key drivers, implications and results of that model, given different — and usually a multitude of — inputs and assumptions.
The spreadsheet is a great “thinking tool” for the spreadsheet modeler, but when it comes to explaining that model to others most will result to copy-pasting static scenarios from the spreadsheet into slide decks, emails and messaging tools to provide the necessary context as the prospect of sharing the spreadsheet “raw” comes with a range of complications.
GRID allows the modeler to securely share their spreadsheet model with an audience, providing a guided and focused narrative while allowing them to freely interact, explore and collaborate on the matter at hand, for example:
- Potential investors getting a feel for the dynamics of a business model
- Prospective customers figuring out the ROI of a product purchase; or
- A management team discussing the effects of a pricing change on their current and future customer base
It’s clear to me that nothing comes close to the traditional spreadsheet in modeling these types of scenarios, and to the extent there are other tools to do so, these are expert tools that are nowhere nearly as flexible, accessible or ubiquitous as the spreadsheet.
Spreadsheets are, and will remain where businesses dream about their future. At GRID we’re happy to facilitate those dreams :)
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Hjalmar Gislason is the founder and CEO of GRID. If you’re interested in spreadsheets, their evolution and the future of how modern teams will work with numbers and calculations make sure you take a look at GRID.