Today, there’s an app for anything and everything. When it comes to business finances, we have software that can do seemingly any task.
Need to create a financial plan? Prepare a report? Analyse data? Check, check, check.
Over the years, I’ve worked with many solutions, ranging from data analytics software to cloud accounting and ERP systems. No doubt, it all helps us enormously in the modern business environment.
And the capabilities are only getting better.
But now and then, I see an article comparing specialised software to spreadsheets.
Main arguments are often centred around the features — ‘In Excel, you can’t do this or that’ — leading to an unsurprising conclusion that it’s dead in the modern workplace.
And yet, I bet you’ve used spreadsheets in the past week.
So why would you solve complex problems with such a simple, slow, error-prone tool? You wouldn’t build a house with just a hammer, right?
Well, this has little to do with fancy features.
It’s the opposite.
Sometimes, a blank piece of paper is all we need for our number-crunching work.
We were taught to approach analytical problems in this way.
To illustrate the point, let’s first see how we used to work with data before spreadsheets.
People have been organising data into rows and columns for centuries — there was always a need to arrange and communicate information in a systematic, compact manner.
The invention of the numerical table as an information storage method dates back to around 1850 BCE. In ancient Mesopotamia, the Sumerians used an encoded language to record accounting information in a grid-like format on clay tablets.
Ever since, accountants have used that Sumerian table structure to prepare worksheets. In fact, the word ‘spreadsheet’ originally referred to the format of bookkeeping ledgers.
The way of organising information continued to evolve.
Then came 1979.
The year when Pink Floyd released their iconic album ‘The Wall’, Margaret Thatcher became the Prime Minister of the UK, and two software engineers, Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, developed the first spreadsheet computer programme, VisiCalc (‘visible calculator’).
Inspired by a traditional accounting spreadsheet, they invented the digital version of it.
Since then, spreadsheet software has replaced paper-based systems, but the key point is that we’ve already used tables for a long time throughout history.
Now let’s move forward to modern times.
Remember your early math classes in school? There you first learned to structure information in a grid.
Besides, you were usually free to express your answer in most assignments. You would’ve been given a problem statement, task conditions, and, if lucky, a method for solving the problem.
No templates, tips, or AI-powered correction.
In college, you continued to use tables to analyse data for research and other coursework.
And here’s how this has translated to your working life.
Let’s say you need to create a budget. You intuitively open a blank spreadsheet, add a timeline, revenue and expense categories, and start making calculations.
The familiar tabular structure even makes the process somewhat addictive, as if you’re building something out of Lego blocks.
When the workbook becomes messy, you know it’s not your technical skills but a reflection of the creative thinking process. Fortunately, you understand how you want to organise the data.
You play around, arrange and rearrange, try some scenarios.
And before you know it, you’ve built a massive yet functional spreadsheet you’re so proud of.
