Have you ever tried to keep control of your warehouse and equipment logistics in a spreadsheet? Not easy. In fact, it is almost impossible. The reason is easy, spreadsheets are not designed to do this job, and will never work as a logistics, warehouse and rental solution. In spite of this, spreadsheets, e-mail and other manual writing programs are currently widely used for this purpose by supplier companies. This has led to major problems, as companies grow, and more people need to be able to access the spreadsheets that shows where equipment is, when it comes back, which parts need to be maintained, and how much money you earn on your equipment.

Difficult to work with
After talking to people in the industry, we realized that this is a collective problem.  The stories where countless when it came to lost or forgotten equipment that caused the companies to loose money and put safety at risk. The industry reported of wast time and resources used to decipher and retrieve information from these spreadsheets, and the more the company grew, the more complicated it became when more people had to access the information.

Vulnerability, errors and risk
At one company we found 221 errors in a spreadsheet they used to keep track of their equipment. The spreadsheet had been in use for a good amount of time and the validity of the data  had gradually decayed. In addition, there were many spelling errors and incorrect references that resulted in the spreadsheet to be a considerable risk on the economic side as well as on the operational side.

There are many good reasons to say “Goodbye to your spreadsheets”.