By Hiran de Silva
Introduction: Beyond the Posts
This article was inspired by numerous posts from Paul Barnhurst and other influencers in the FP&A space. While these discussions raise important points, I felt compelled to offer a foundational perspective that is often missing. My aim is not to rebut specific individuals, but to expose the underlying misdirection—sometimes inadvertent, sometimes strategic—that has shaped how Excel is misunderstood and misused in enterprise settings.
Part I: The Demonization of Excel
For over 20 years, FP&A tools, planning vendors, and ERP platforms have waged a coordinated campaign against Excel. Their pitch? Something they dramatically label “Excel Hell.” Read the white papers, sales decks, or webinars from this $100 billion industry and you’ll find Excel repeatedly cast as the villain: a standalone tool, misused by lone analysts creating fragile, fragmented models.
The logic is circular: spreadsheets are bad because they’re built by individuals, and they’re built by individuals because spreadsheets are inherently personal. The conclusion follows: Excel is unfit for enterprise use.
Part II: The Purple Square Parable
Let me explain with an analogy I often use in client workshops.
Imagine a company hires someone to paint a single 1cm purple square on a large wall. That person perfects their work—the edges are sharp, the fill consistent. They’re proud. Eventually, a supervisor coordinates a team of people each painting their own purple square. Collaboration becomes a matter of aligning squares.
But management doesn’t want a collage of squares. They want the wall purple—clean, consistent, scalable. What they need isn’t more square painters; it’s a spray gun.
From the management view, the purple square methodology appears fragmented, inefficient, and utterly unsuitable for scale. Yet this is precisely how most Excel is taught and used today.
Part III: “Excel Hell” — A Manufactured Crisis
The FP&A industry has exploited this fragmented usage model to sell replacements. Excel, they say, is unmanageable. Unscalable. Lacking version control. Offering no “single source of truth.”
All of this stems from the assumption that Excel is inherently a personal tool, unfit for enterprise. But what if that assumption is wrong?
Part IV: The Counterarguments That Fail
When Excel is attacked, its defenders respond in three ways:
- Excel has evolved — new features like Power Query, dynamic arrays, Lambdas, XLOOKUP, and even Python support make it far more powerful than ever before.
- Users need better training — if only people knew how to use modern Excel features, we’d avoid these problems.
- It’s marketing propaganda — many anti-Excel articles are advertorials from vendors like Anaplan or Workday.
Each of these responses is true, but all miss the deeper point.
Part V: The Spray Gun Was Always There
Excel isn’t just a personal productivity tool. It has always had the capability to be something more—something enterprise-grade. As far back as 1993, Microsoft’s DevCast showed Excel participating in client-server architectures, using ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), connecting to relational databases, and serving as a front-end in fully collaborative, multi-user systems.
These architectures allow Excel to:
- Integrate data from centralized sources
- Enforce controls and workflows
- Scale across departments and teams
- Deliver “single version of truth” outcomes
- Replace entire FP&A systems at a fraction of the cost
These aren’t add-ons. They’re built-in.
Part VI: The Real Opportunity — And Why It’s Missed
This is where things get serious.
While the planning tools industry has spent decades building up a case against Excel, and social media influencers have spent years showcasing square-painting features, the actual capability to spray paint the wall has been sitting in Excel’s DNA all along.
But hardly anyone sees it.
Why? Because the Excel community—especially on LinkedIn and YouTube—is misdirected. They chase flashy features. They obsess over single-user tricks. They celebrate syntax and formulaic cleverness, not architecture and scalability.
Even respected voices like Paul Barnhurst, perhaps unintentionally, reinforce this mindset. His recent LinkedIn post listing Excel’s modern features showcases dozens of individual formulas—but all reinforce the same paradigm: one user, one square, one sheet.
Part VII: Four Case Studies That Changed Everything
In my own consulting career, I demonstrated this difference—the leap from painting squares to painting the wall—with four enterprise clients. Each time:
- The client had fragmented processes using Excel or clunky FP&A tools
- I showed them a centralized, connected, automated solution using Excel + database architecture
- They instantly recognized the scalability, control, and agility now available
- They hired me, often expanding the solution across departments
- In every case, my rates tripled or more
This wasn’t about flashy tricks. It was about enterprise thinking with tools they already owned.
Part VIII: It’s Not Technical. It’s Creative.
Here’s the irony: implementing enterprise Excel solutions is not technically difficult.
This isn’t Power BI DAX gymnastics. It isn’t coding in Python. It’s about designing architecture with lateral thinking:
- One line of VBA connecting to a database
- Structured query logic feeding multiple models
- Controlled processes enforcing workflows
This is whiteboard thinking, not keyboard heroism. But it requires breaking out of the mental box that says “Excel is just a spreadsheet.”
Part IX: The Suppression of Truth
To suppress this capability from management—whether knowingly or not—is unethical. It deprives organizations of better solutions and deprives professionals of transformative career opportunities.
To promote FP&A tools without first asking, “Could we do this with Excel?” is to betray your fiduciary responsibility to your stakeholders. Especially when Excel can achieve the same goals faster, cheaper, and more flexibly.
Part X: The Flat Earth Analogy
Imagine an entire industry built around the idea that the Earth is flat. Now imagine someone proving it’s round.
Would the industry welcome this? Or fight it?
We’re in a similar position. The Excel bashing industry depends on keeping the community unaware of what Excel can really do. But once the truth spreads—once people see the curvature—it’s game over.
Conclusion: A Call to Transformation
This is a moment of truth. Excel has the capability. The question is: do we have the clarity of thought to use it?
The opportunity is vast:
- Millions of professionals already trained in Excel
- A $100B industry ripe for disruption
- Processes everywhere waiting to be transformed
The only thing missing is the shift in mindset—from painting purple squares to painting the whole wall.
And if you’re the one who shows that to your organization? You don’t just triple your rates.
You become the only game in town.
Add comment