Who Killed Excel

For the longest time, Excel was the King of reporting… every department has some sort of Excel-based report that’s ‘critical’ to their business.

But times have changed.  Just like Excel trumped Lotus 1-2-3 back in the day, the time has come to relinquish the strong-hold that Excel has on business.  Some say it’s time to move on.

In today’s world of tremendous data, Excel just doesn’t cut it anymore… enter Business Intelligence, or BI as it’s more commonly known.  While BI has been around for some time now, only recently has it been getting the attention it deserves.  Today’s modern BI applications are very robust and sophisticated while still easy to use.  They deliver information faster, allow for drill-down capability and provide better insight to your business.

Many organizations drop in a BI application for a point solution such as Labor Analysis.  By implementing a BI solution on top of your Workforce Management application, companies can ’see’ actionable data in simple KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that matter to them.  Such KPIs include things like:

• sales per hour (or other time increment)
• sales per square foot
• labor as a percentage of sales
• unplanned labor costs
• labor coverage over customer traffic

This greater insight, when delivered in a timely manner, allows organizations to move swiftly to right the ship and help keep things on track, and on budget.