{"id":1421,"date":"2014-10-08T00:00:01","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T00:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/?p=1421"},"modified":"2016-09-26T09:50:47","modified_gmt":"2016-09-26T14:50:47","slug":"beware-smart-people-dumb-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/beware-smart-people-dumb-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"BEWARE: Smart People with Dumb Tools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You have intelligent people in your organization. You hire the best engineers, architects, IT managers and executives. Why insult their intelligence by providing them with tools built for the 90s? There was a time not that long ago when fluency with Excel was a measurement of your business acumen, but today there are spreadsheet alternatives and seven-year-olds are creating spreadsheets for daily chore charts and tracking soccer scores. Is this still an appropriate way to keep tabs on, understand and run your business in today\u2019s digital world?<\/p>\n<p>Leaders have been making important strategic decisions since the dawn of time, but the approach to making a sound choice must evolve with the drastically changing landscape. Technology allows our organizations to be connected in more ways than ever thought possible, which has driven new and increased efficiencies in countless areas of the business. Yet, making quick, well informed decisions has become more difficult than ever before. The decision making process is broken.<\/p>\n<p>In a much simpler world without mobile devices, cloud computing or software defined data centers, managing, tracking and understanding people, process and technology assets in order to define strategy might have been adequately accomplished using Excel, Visio or Powerpoint (EVP). Today, staying on top of the devices, software, apps and technology used by just one person is hardly doable via a manually updated spreadsheet. It amazes me that there are still business and technology leaders who are comfortable with using that approach to manage an entire organization.<\/p>\n<p>Troux CTO Bill Cason recently mentioned that mismanaging and misunderstanding critical data can lead to any number of business pitfalls, some that you can\u2019t come back from, yet large organizations continue to rely on a method that has proven time and time again to be dangerously error-prone.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe perception of the ease-of-use of spreadsheets is to some extent an illusion. It is dead easy to get an answer from a spreadsheet, however, it is not necessarily easy to get the right answer. Thus the distorted view. The difficulty of using alternatives to spreadsheets is overestimated by many people. The hard way looks easy, the easy way looks hard.\u201d \u2013 Patrick Burns, <a title=\" Spreadsheet Addiction\" href=\"https:\/\/www.burns-stat.com\/documents\/tutorials\/spreadsheet-addiction\/\" target=\"_blank\"><span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Spreadsheet Addiction&#8221; post on <\/span>Burns Statistics Blog<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Even if you somehow located the elusive state of spreadsheet perfection and you had all your dates, numbers and interdependency ducks in a row (or a column), would you then feel fully empowered to make important decisions for the business? Wouldn\u2019t you feel better if you could also take into account the knowledge, data and information living inside the heads, departments and databases of all the other parts of the business? Specifically, how the pieces of information listed in your spreadsheet or power point deck tie to your goals and strategies, your processes, your capabilities, your policies and your organizations? It\u2019s possible, and not as difficult as you may think.<\/p>\n<p>As recently quoted in an <a title=\"A Strategy for Making Better IT Investment Decisions\" href=\"https:\/\/deloitte.wsj.com\/cio\/2014\/05\/28\/a-strategy-for-making-better-it-investment-decisions\/\" target=\"_blank\">article<span class=\"sr-only\">, A Strategy for Making Better IT Investment Decisions,<\/span> in the Wall Street Journal\u2019s CIO Journal<\/a>, \u201cWhen the business cases and subsequent analysis that various groups bring to IT planning discussions are complex and interdependent\u2014as they often are\u2014decision-makers can approach their analysis with more clarity and confidence when they are able to visualize scenarios.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Our worlds are complex because of the impressive rate of innovation and technological advancement we have and will continue to experience. It is an exciting time to be part of the uber-connected world with organizations that are digitally linked across time zones, departments, projects and individuals. The good news is that options for managing that complex environment have also improved due to innovation and advancement. Put down the spreadsheet. It is time to start using tools that are as smart as the people you hired to use them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You have intelligent people in your organization. You hire the best engineers, architects, IT managers and executives. Why insult their intelligence by providing them with tools built for the 90s? There was a time not that long ago when fluency with Excel was a measurement of your business acumen, but today there are spreadsheet alternatives&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":1392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-enterprise-architecture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.8 (Yoast SEO v26.8) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Spreadsheet Alternatives for Innovation - Blog | Planview<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Are spreadsheets still an appropriate way to keep tabs on, understand and run your business in today\u2019s digital world? Learn about spreadsheet alternatives.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/beware-smart-people-dumb-tools\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"BEWARE: Smart People with Dumb Tools\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Are spreadsheets still an appropriate way to keep tabs on, understand and run your business in today\u2019s digital world? Learn about spreadsheet alternatives.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/beware-smart-people-dumb-tools\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Planview Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Planview-Inc\/89422974772\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-10-08T00:00:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-09-26T14:50:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/BEWARE-Smart-People-with-Dumb-Tools-750x400.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"750\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Troux by Planview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Planview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Planview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Troux by Planview\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/beware-smart-people-dumb-tools\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/beware-smart-people-dumb-tools\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Troux by Planview\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/#\/schema\/person\/16cab2f3a574f40bde41e5ecd393383a\"},\"headline\":\"BEWARE: Smart People with Dumb Tools\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-10-08T00:00:01+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-09-26T14:50:47+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/beware-smart-people-dumb-tools\/\"},\"wordCount\":634,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/beware-smart-people-dumb-tools\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/BEWARE-Smart-People-with-Dumb-Tools-750x400.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Enterprise Architecture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/beware-smart-people-dumb-tools\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/beware-smart-people-dumb-tools\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/beware-smart-people-dumb-tools\/\",\"name\":\"Spreadsheet Alternatives for Innovation - Blog | Planview\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/beware-smart-people-dumb-tools\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/beware-smart-people-dumb-tools\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/BEWARE-Smart-People-with-Dumb-Tools-750x400.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-10-08T00:00:01+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-09-26T14:50:47+00:00\",\"description\":\"Are spreadsheets still an appropriate way to keep tabs on, understand and run your business in today\u2019s digital world? 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