I just had a cheekily powerful idea:
You can’t do this with Excel? No — we turn it around: You can’t do this with your External FP&A tools.
You can’t do this with your ERP system.
You can’t do this with your Planning Tools.
And here’s why that idea matters:
The Background: How the Anti-Excel Industry Was Born
Almost 30 years ago, an entire industry emerged to sell “alternatives to Excel.” Why?
Because Excel had become the dominant platform for enterprise workflow. Marketing teams realized that by pushing against something widespread and beloved, they could create a new category — and new demand.
This is a fundamental marketing principle: find out what your audience identifies with, then challenge it to sell something “better.” It wasn’t personal against Excel; it was just good marketing strategy.
Over the past decade, this marketing movement — what I call the “Excel bashing industry” — evolved dramatically thanks to social media. Microsoft, seeking to cater to the largest number of users, adapted Excel with features appealing primarily to novices and casual users, rather than enterprise professionals.
As a result, Excel’s image shifted. It became associated with manual processes, small-scale tasks, and fragmented workflows — precisely the weaknesses ERP, FP&A, and planning tool vendors exploit in their marketing today.
Their consistent, primary message? “You can’t do this with Excel.”
The Reality: Marketing vs. Real-World Capability
If you study the marketing materials — from IBM, Oracle, SAP, Anaplan, Workday Adaptive Planning (the creators of the “Nine Circles of Excel Hell”), Planful, and many others — you’ll see the same message repeated: Excel is obsolete. You need us instead.
But here’s the thing:
For nearly 30 years, I’ve been doing exactly what they claim “you can’t do with Excel.”
In fact, my ability to deliver enterprise-grade solutions in Excel — solutions that IT departments, external consultants, and major ERP platforms could not provide — led some major organizations to triple my pay.
The claim that “you can’t do this with Excel” simply isn’t true. It depends entirely on how you use it — and whether you understand its full capability.
The Campaign: Turning the Tables
So here’s the plan:
We start a campaign to flip the script.
Instead of “You can’t do this with Excel,” we show:
You can’t do this with your FP&A tools.
We will demonstrate, step-by-step, how Excel can perform critical enterprise tasks — consolidation, audit trails, drill-downs, and more — better, faster, and cheaper than many bloated systems ever could.
The ERP and planning tool vendors typically pick on consolidation, claiming it’s a weak point for Excel. But I’ve built dynamic, scalable consolidation solutions in Excel for global organizations spanning 400 stores in 90 cities across 50 countries — and with better drill-downs, auditability, and flexibility than many ERP systems can even dream of offering.
And here’s the key:
- With Excel, we can create a prototype in days, not months.
- We don’t need multi-million-pound budgets or years-long rollouts.
- We can adapt instantly as business needs change — not wait for “feature requests” or custom development fees.
- Most importantly: we deliver exactly what senior management imagines, without compromise.
Meanwhile, if you ask many FP&A or ERP vendors whether they can match these capabilities, the honest ones will tell you:
- “Maybe someday.”
- “Put it in as a feature request.”
- Or even, “We don’t believe we’ll ever be able to offer that.”
Customization with ERP platforms is theoretically unlimited — but always at extreme cost, time, and risk.
Why This Matters
This isn’t just a technical debate. It’s about restoring respect for Excel’s place as a true enterprise-grade platform — when used properly.
In 1998, I first encountered the “You can’t do this with Excel” message at an exhibition from a company called Adatum (later acquired by Cognos, and then IBM). Since then, dozens of planning tool vendors have repeated the same mantra. Some even suggested that Dante, when writing his Inferno, must have been thinking about Excel!
But the reality on the ground is different:
Excel — when applied correctly — solves problems faster, cheaper, and with more agility than most enterprise systems can manage.
And this isn’t about knocking every FP&A or ERP tool. Many have real strengths and specific advantages. But we must challenge the lazy narrative that Excel is automatically inferior.
A Call to the Excel Community
So here’s my message to the Excel community:
Please join me.
Let’s push back against decades of Excel-bashing with real-world evidence. Let’s show — loudly and proudly — what Excel can really do.
Together, we can change the narrative, reclaim Excel’s rightful place as a powerhouse platform, and educate businesses to make better, more informed decisions about the tools they rely on.
The worm has turned. It’s time for Excel to fight back.
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