Table of content

• Why do many organisations still rely so heavily on Excel for reporting?
• Why does Excel often remain the default choice for businesses?
• What risks arise when organisations use Excel beyond small-scale analysis?
• What benefits do organisations gain when moving from Excel to a BI platform?
• How we helped a global logistics company move from Excel to a BI platform
• BI tools mean better decision-making 
  

Why do many organisations still rely so heavily on Excel for reporting?

Excel remains popular because it is fast, familiar, and available on every device. However, when it becomes the primary analytics tool, it creates risks: manual work, inconsistent KPIs, fragile processes, security gaps and delays in decision-making. Moving to a Business Intelligence (BI) platform helps organisations centralise data, automate reporting and ensure a single source of truth.

Many mid-sized and large organisations still run a surprising amount of their reporting and analysis in Excel. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with spreadsheets. Excel is quick and familiar. Problems appear, however, when it becomes the only analytics tool.

In this article, we explain why heavy dependence on Excel can limit business intelligence.We also share examples of how moving to a suitable BI platform can produce cleaner data and support better decisions.

Why does Excel often remain the default choice for businesses?

Excel has been the go-to reporting tool for decades, and large organisations often stay with it primarily because:

• It’s bundled with the Office suite. Excel is already on every device and staff know how to use it. This makes it the default choice and removes the need for new tools. It starts with a blank canvas, so companies can build their own views with custom formulas or manual input.
• They’ve invested time in making Excel “work”. Teams using Excel rely on templates they built over time. As they get the job done, there’s little motivation to change. For this reason, it’s used for financial reports, operational dashboards, and ad-hoc analysis across the business.

However, just because Excel is widespread doesn’t mean it meets modern data needs. 

What risks arise when organisations use Excel beyond small-scale analysis?

Relying on Excel for more than small dataset analyses brings significant inefficiencies and risks. What looks good on the surface often hides operational waste, such as:

1. Time-consuming and costly manual work

A 2025 Parseur study found that manual data entry costs companies over $28,000 per employee per year. Staff spend more than nine hours a week transferring information from emails, PDFs, and spreadsheets into internal systems. 

What we believe is particularly noteworthy here is that those who spend the most time on this work often sit in higher-cost roles like IT and finance – meaning, the real financial impact is even larger.

1. Fragile processes prone to error

Manual data entry and complex formulas make spreadsheet mistakes inevitable. A well-known example is Public Health England’s COVID-19 reporting failure in 2020, when nearly 16,000 test results were lost due to an outdated XLS format that capped the number of rows. Thousands of positive cases went unreported, and contact tracing was delayed for tens of thousands of people.

2. Maintenance and versioning burden 

The number of Excel files is another aspect that can hurt data consistency. Each team creates its own reports, pulling data at different times and storing them in different places. Oracle calls this proliferation of spreadsheets very accurate, i.e., “spreadsheet hell”. All of them might require updating, reconciling, and constant oversight, and with thousands of interlinked files it becomes nearly impossible to maintain.

Version control adds another layer of risk. It’s common to see long email chains ending in “Analysis_Final_v5_FINAL.xlsx,” with multiple people editing separate copies. Even with cloud tools, many users still create local files, resulting in conflicting numbers and no clear source of truth.

3. Security and compliance risks

Spreadsheets often contain sensitive information, from company financial results to clients’ personal data. Not everyone realises that Excel offers minimal security controls in this regard. In fact, just a few years back, Microsoft removed certain macros from the tool after they identified them as potential security vulnerabilities.

Files can be shared with the wrong person, stored locally without protection, or accessed by employees who shouldn’t see them. There’s usually no audit trail, no visibility into who made changes, and no consistent way to enforce permissions.

Without centralised control or governance, organisations struggle to meet compliance requirements and safeguard confidential data. In essence, they expose themselves to financial, legal, and reputational damage.

4. Data silos and inconsistent KPIs

Lastly, different departments often define the same metrics in diverse ways. Sales, finance, and operations might each calculate “monthly revenue” or customer counts differently, resulting in conflicting reports. This makes KPI alignment impossible and distorts decision-making, as divisions plan based on metrics that aren’t truly comparable. For example, one team might include certain costs in a profitability KPI while another excludes them, creating conflicting views of performance.

What benefits do organisations gain when moving from Excel to a BI platform?

A BI platform centralises your data and reporting logic so that everyone draws from the same, consistent source of truth. Below, we share the main benefits we’ve seen our clients experience after moving from spreadsheets to BI. 

1. A single source of truth for organization data

A BI platform stores company data in one central repository. This improves KPI alignment, because identical concepts are now measured the same way for all teams.

In a B2B software company, Excel can push each department to define onboarding in its own way. A BI setup fixes this because all data moves into one source. Dashboards update automatically and  leadership can see one clear view and act quickly.

2. Automated data refresh and major reduction in manual work

A modern BI platform automates the entire data pipeline that teams used to maintain manually in Excel. Instead of exporting files, copying data between sheets, or stitching together reports, tools like Azure Data Factory pull information from ERP, CRM, and other operational systems directly into a central database. Since these types of platforms have tens of built-in connectors, the data flows in automatically. 

Dashboards refresh on their own, sometimes in real time or on an hourly schedule. As a result, teams no longer wait days for someone to assemble “the latest Excel” and know that the information they’re looking at is current and consistent.

One of our clients, whose story we share below, saw reporting cycles shrink dramatically after we’ve helped them move to Power BI. Their analysts regained meaningful time after the move, particularly since they were able to automate their data flows. It’s the kind of operational uplift that Excel simply cannot deliver.

3. Scalability and performance – Business Intelligence tools grow with your business

A modern BI platform is designed to cope with data volumes and analytical complexity that Excel can’t. While spreadsheets begin to struggle after a few hundred thousand rows, enterprise BI databases and OLAP models process millions or even billions of records with ease. Tools like Power BI can work with vast in-memory datasets and scale seamlessly in the cloud as the business expands, without file-splitting or slowdowns.

After moving from manual reporting to a BI platform, your team will be able to explore large datasets in seconds, run complex queries on demand, and rely on systems that grow alongside their operations. 

4. Deeper insights through modern, interactive analytics

Instead of static spreadsheets, users gain interactive dashboards with drill-downs, cross-filtering, and dynamic visualisations that make it easy to run queries in real time. With a few clicks, they can uncover the underlying detail and remove the need to copy data into new files or build temporary filters.

For example, in a B2B logistics software company, a sales manager might open a dashboard and immediately drill from regional revenue down to individual client accounts with a single click. If a sudden drop appears, they can filter by industry, contract tier, or product module to pinpoint the cause. Unlike with Excel, there is no need for manual data slicing.

BI platforms also include powerful calculation engines that support complex aggregations, time-based comparisons, and reusable logic applied consistently across all reports.

5. Collaboration and data accessibility

When reports live in a shared BI portal, everyone accesses the same, up-to-date dashboard. They can also access it more easily – teams can view insights through a browser, mobile app, or an integrated workspace. These different data access points, however, don’t mean data is more at risk. Quite the contrary. Role-based security (which comes built into BI tools) ensures each person only sees the data they’re authorised to access.

How we helped a global logistics company move from Excel to a BI platform

Our client, a leading commercial vehicle and logistics company, reached a point where Excel starting slowing decision-making processes down. Each department created its own files with slightly different KPI definitions. Teams updated reports by hand, which caused delays and made it difficult to get a reliable view of the business.

We introduced a unified BI platform and built one data model that replaced manual updates with automated flows. We also created role-based dashboards, which match each department’s goals. 

The company can now be certain it uses consistent, accurate numbers in their reports, without waiting for someone to edit a spreadsheet. As a result, leaders see what is happening almost in real time. All this means a more reliable, quicker decision-making process.

BI tools mean better decision-making 

It’s our belief that Excel will always serve a purpose, but it cannot carry the weight of enterprise reporting as a company scales. At a certain point, spreadsheets turn into isolated files, KPI definitions start drifting apart, and teams wait for manual updates that slow decisions. 

That’s the point where organizations should turn to a BI platform, which will pull data into one source, automate updates, and help keep KPIs aligned. At Holisticon, we help companies set up the right BI tools, define shared metrics, and support teams through adoption. If your organisation is ready to move beyond Excel and rely on trustworthy information, get in touch.

FAQ: Why large organisations struggle with Excel – and how a BI Platform can set them free

Is Excel still suitable for business reporting in large organisations?

Excel works well for small-scale analysis and quick calculations, but it becomes problematic when used as a primary reporting tool in larger organisations. As data volumes grow, manual updates, inconsistent KPIs, and version control issues make it difficult to maintain accuracy, security, and trust in the numbers.

What are the biggest risks of relying on Excel for reporting?

The main risks include high manual workload, human error, data inconsistencies, and security gaps. Teams often work on multiple versions of the same file, which leads to conflicting results and no single source of truth. Over time, this slows decision-making and increases operational costs.

How does a BI platform improve reporting compared to Excel?

A BI platform centralises data from multiple sources, automates refreshes, and ensures that everyone works with the same definitions and metrics. It eliminates manual data handling, improves data quality, and allows teams to explore insights through interactive dashboards instead of static spreadsheets.

When should an organisation consider moving from Excel to BI?

When reporting becomes time-consuming, data consistency is difficult to maintain, or business decisions depend on manually updated spreadsheets, it’s usually a sign that Excel has reached its limits. A BI platform becomes essential once organisations need scalable, secure, and reliable reporting to support growth and decision-making.