If you looked up and saw this, would you put up with it?

And if you saw this swarm of locust coming toward you, would you stay put and let them swarm all over you?

What about a swarm of killer bees? Would you still just sit there?

I’m guessing the answer is no, hell no, and get me the flamethrower!

So why are you still letting spreadsheets run your life?

Given that 80% and 90% of spreadsheets contain serious non-trivial errors, that could cost you millions, and land your corporate officers in legal jeopardy, you should be doing everything you can to remove these pests, which can be said to be the technological equivalent of cockroaches, from your company. You should not be treating them as your most beloved pet. Like capuchins and pit bulls, these deadly critters can turn on you.

Needless to say I was foaming at the mouth when I saw this recent article over on CIO that said BI Vendors Finally Embrace the Spreadsheet. Simply put, if the tool is attempting to unlock, extract, and aggregate data from an uncontrolled proliferation of spreadsheets, it’s not business intelligence. Spreadsheets are about as unintelligent as you can get. It’s one thing to allow input through and export to a spreadsheet (as spreadsheets are good for initial capture of matrix friendly data and for users who want to toy around with a copy of the data without corrupting the data store), but it’s another thing entirely to think you can extract life from a plague of spreadsheets. Plagues kill!

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