For more than three decades – practically an eon in tech years – Excel has greased the wheels of businesses and aspiring individuals around the world. In the US alone, more than 700,000 companies are estimated to use Excel, and worldwide the number of unique Excel users hovers at just over a billion – about 1/8th of the global population.
However, with a fast-developing era of subscription-based, point-and-click enterprise SaaS data solutions well underway, it’s becoming clear that using Excel in the “traditional” sense is less obviously efficient than it once was. Clicking on the Excel desktop icon, selecting “New Workbook” and formatting a unique document from a blank page or template is just enough of a resource commitment to put you behind the eight ball by today’s lightning-fast project delivery standards. The mundane, predictable nature of Excel’s usage has, for well over a decade, begged for and received the same form of intervention which much of the restless tech community constantly marches toward: automation.