Replacing Excel: When Custom Software Pays Off for SMEs

First things first: we like Excel. It is one of the most useful programs there is: flexible, familiar, ready to use straight away. The question is not whether Excel is good. The question is whether your company has outgrown it. This article shows five warning signs, gives you a self-check, works out honestly what a replacement costs, and says just as honestly when to stick with the spreadsheet.

The five warning signs

The signs rarely appear all at once. It usually starts with one, and the others follow as the company grows or a key person is away.

1. Only one person still understands the file

A fiduciary firm with seven employees runs its mandate planning in a spreadsheet the co-owner built over twelve years: 14 linked sheets, formulas no one is allowed to touch, a macro from 2016. Then he goes on holiday for three weeks, and the quarterly overview for clients stays undone because nobody knows which cell controls the cut-off date.

The hidden cost: holidays, illness and resignation become an operational risk. Decisions are delayed, requests pile up, and the knowledge about the company’s most important workflow lives in one head, not in the company.

The software version: the calculation logic lives in the program, documented and used the same way by everyone. Whoever needs the overview clicks a button. And if you change development partners, another team can carry on, as described in the software handover checklist.

2. The same data is entered more than once

A plumbing business with nine people keeps its customers in four places: the quote list, the invoice sheet, the address file and the owner’s phone. A customer moves. The new address goes into the invoice sheet, but the reminder still goes to the old one because the address file was never updated. The customer is annoyed, and accounting spends half an hour finding out why.

The hidden cost: every change has to be made three or four times, and sooner or later one is forgotten. Duplicate entry is the single most common source of errors, and it costs not just working time but trust.

The software version: one customer, one record. Quote, order, invoice and reminder all refer to the same entry. One change, valid everywhere.

3. Version chaos: “Quote_final_v3_NEW_really.xlsx”

An association with around 600 members emails its member list back and forth between the president, the treasurer and the secretariat. Before the annual general meeting there are three versions, and the member count differs by 14. One member has paid but is still listed as outstanding in two of the three lists.

The hidden cost: meetings spent arguing about which list is correct instead of about the actual business. Embarrassing reminders to members who paid long ago. And nobody knows which figure goes into the annual report.

The software version: several people, one truth. Everyone works on the same state at the same time, with roles and permissions. For exactly this case we turned four separate filing systems into one with Cliantra, deliberately built on freely available software rather than an expensive new development, in four weeks and with no licence fees per user.

4. The spreadsheet calculates, but no one can justify it

A building cleaning company quotes a municipality for cleaning a school. The spreadsheet says 42 hours per week. The municipality asks: how did you arrive at that figure? The honest answer: experience, poured into formulas over the years that nobody can derive any more. The contract goes to a competitor who can back up every line of their calculation.

The hidden cost: lost tenders, discounts given under pressure because you cannot defend your own figure, and new employees who need months before they “calculate the way the boss does”.

The software version: traceable calculation logic instead of formulas that grew over time. That is exactly why we built Easy-FM, a web application that calculates cleaning and maintenance effort in a traceable, reusable way. For the larger scale there is easyCAFM: cleaning effort is calculated from recognised industry benchmarks instead of estimated, every figure can be justified to customers and administrators, and the same data produces a quote-ready PDF at the push of a button. New employees there calculate as reliably as long-serving ones after a short induction.

5. Manual work a computer could do

A joinery with twelve employees: every Monday the office manager transfers the hours from the paper time sheets into the Excel table, three hours of work. At month end she builds the owner’s report from it, half a day. Add the re-checking whenever a figure does not add up.

The hidden cost: around 150 hours a year on work that creates no value, plus the errors that creep in while retyping. Multiply that by your internal hourly rate and you know what the spreadsheet really costs.

The software version: the hours are captured once, and the report is generated automatically. How far that can go is shown by plaene-scannen.ch: customers calculate the price themselves in the browser and order directly, orders arrive fully calculated, and price enquiries disappear entirely. More examples are in Automating processes in SMEs.

Self-check: how far along is your company?

Answer the five questions honestly and add up the points.

Scoring: 0 to 2 points, stick with Excel. 3 to 5 points, watch the workflow that scored the points and note for a month how much time it takes. 6 points or more, a replacement is very likely worthwhile, starting with the workflow that scored highest.

When Excel is perfectly fine

An honest counter-calculation: if one person works with the spreadsheet, the amount of data stays manageable, nothing is entered twice and there is no need to justify anything, stick with Excel. The same goes for one-off analyses, for prototypes of an idea you still want to test, and for anything that may not be needed in a year. Software for a problem that is not one would be money thrown away, and we will say so. We have sent customers back to Excel before.

What does replacing Excel cost?

The honest ranges: a focused tool, meaning one calculator, one list or one workflow, costs CHF 10’000 to 25’000 with us. A full line-of-business application covering several workflows is roughly CHF 20’000 to 100’000. After a first assessment we give you a fixed price, and extensions only cost money when you want them. Details are in the article What does custom software cost?.

Let us work it through for the plumbing business from warning sign 2: nine people, six of whom use the customer list.

Assumptions: the company needs a central customer and order list, so a focused tool. We take the middle of the range, CHF 18’000. Hosting with us is optional and fixed from CHF 300 per year. After two years the company wants an extension, say an export to accounting, estimated at 20 hours at CHF 180 per hour.

Calculation over five years:

For comparison, a rented standard solution for the same six users: CHF 30 to 80 per user per month, so 6 x CHF 50 x 60 months at a mid-range price comes to CHF 18’000 over five years, and after that the rent keeps running. On top of that, the standard solution may cover 80 percent of the workflows, with the other 20 percent still ending up in Excel. After five years the custom solution belongs to you; the rental does not.

Excel, custom software or rented software?

When rented software is the better choice is covered in depth in Custom software vs. SaaS. In short: for common workflows like bookkeeping or payroll, renting is often right. For the workflow that sets your company apart, rarely.

Keeping your existing data

The biggest worry when switching is usually not the price but the question: what happens to ten years of data in the spreadsheet? The answer: it comes with you.

The process looks like this. First we go through the spreadsheets together and clarify which columns are actually needed. In our experience a third are legacy. Then we import the data, clean up duplicates (the customer who appears three times with slightly different spelling) and show you the result for checking. With Cliantra, the association’s data was taken over in week two; by week four the team was trained and operations handed over.

Then come a few weeks of parallel operation: the spreadsheet stays open, the software runs alongside it, and you compare. Only when you trust the new solution does the spreadsheet retire. It stays as an archive in case you ever need to look something up.

Starting small: the first version in weeks

“Replacing Excel” does not mean replacing everything at once. It usually starts with the one workflow that hurts the most: the order list, the costing, the scheduling. Everything else stays as it is for now.

With easyCAFM, the first usable version ran with real buildings after four weeks, covering data capture and calculation. Planning, work orders and defect reporting followed in the next four weeks. With plaene-scannen.ch, the calculator and ordering ran internally in the first language on day three, and the four-language launch followed after one week. That is not the rule for every project, but it shows: the first benefit is close when you cut the scope small.

Our approach from Rotkreuz in the Canton of Zug, for SMEs across Switzerland, is always the same: first conversation, assessment, fixed price, first version, then you decide how to continue. Extensions only cost money when you want them. What we mean by custom software and what the handover looks like is on the service page.

The next step

If the self-check came to six points or more, a conversation is worth it. If not, keep your spreadsheet with a clear conscience and read this article again in a year.

What would your workflow cost? The price calculator gives you a first fixed-price estimate in two minutes, without registration and without a call back unless you want one.

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