By Hiran de Silva

In offices around the world, workers open Excel and get to work inside their assigned “purple square.” It’s a metaphor—one that reveals more than you think. Imagine you’re asked to paint a one-centimeter square purple. That’s your job. You do it well. Your colleagues do theirs. You take care at the edges. You collaborate at the borders. And management praises your effort.

But step back. Zoom out. You notice something peculiar: the goal wasn’t to paint a set of neat squares. The goal was to paint the whole wall purple. And suddenly the question arises—why are we doing this manually, one centimeter at a time, when a spray gun could do it in seconds?

This is the starting point of a much bigger discussion—about Excel, about enterprise architecture, about systems, tradition, resistance, and opportunity.


Why We Stick to the Square

People work inside boxes not because it’s efficient, but because it feels safe. There’s tradition here. It’s orderly. It reflects societal structures that have existed for centuries: know your place, don’t look beyond your remit. You paint your square; others paint theirs. The foreman (middle management) keeps watch.

Innovation is tolerated—but only inside the square. That’s why Excel feels so “right” to so many people. It matches their mental model of work: a personal, bounded space they can control. The spreadsheet is the box.

And over time, the technology has evolved not to break the box—but to reinforce it. Microsoft has added more features, more power within the spreadsheet: Power Query, Dynamic Arrays, Lambdas, even Python. But still, it’s all inside your purple square.

The entire business world seems to agree on this structure:

  • The worker paints inside their Excel box.
  • The IT department handles the “spray gun” stuff—ERP systems, global integrations, cloud platforms.
  • And everyone accepts this unspoken deal.

But it’s a deal built on misunderstanding, inefficiency, and massive hidden cost.


Why ERP Didn’t Solve the Problem

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems were supposed to solve the problem. They promised one central source of truth, one integrated platform for finance, HR, manufacturing, supply chain.

But that was theory.

In practice, ERP systems proliferated: Oracle, SAP, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and more. Companies merged. Projects were sold by vendors and managed by consultants who were incentivized not to consolidate systems, but to expand their scope. Each new system came with its own team, its own politics, its own data. Integration was the exception, not the rule.

As a result, ERP today is fragmented. The systems don’t talk. Data doesn’t flow. Business processes stall. And who steps in to fill the gap?

Excel.


Excel: The Glue That Wasn’t Meant to Be

When spreadsheets were invented they were never designed to be the infrastructure of the enterprise. Yet here they are—bridging gaps, moving data, enabling workarounds. Albeit manually , inside the box.

They are the unofficial, unrecognized glue of modern business. And every worker knows this. They just don’t talk about it. They open Excel, and they start painting their square.

But when they try to work collaboratively, the result? Excel Hell.

  • Disconnected workbooks
  • Risky manual processes
  • Hidden dependencies
  • Nightmarish audits
  • And a finance team that drowns in formula-driven madness

All while IT looks on and says, “Not our problem. Do it with a spreadsheet.”


The Switch: From Painting Squares to Using the Spray Gun

Now here’s the switch.

Imagine someone shows up—not to dismantle Excel, but to elevate it. To reveal that Excel, when used properly, doesn’t have to stay in the box. It can be the spray gun.

And better still: no special software, no new licenses, no IT overhaul. Just Excel. Used with a different architecture. Properly.

That’s what I’ve done.

Using tools native to Microsoft Office—Excel, ADO, SQL, Access, VBA—I’ve built client-server models that turn Excel from a static form into a dynamic enterprise tool.

  • No links
  • No corruption
  • No duplication
  • Live data, centrally stored
  • Process logic, consolidated and governed

I’ve shown this to managers, and they’ve gasped: “I never knew this was possible.”

Is it easy? Yes, let me show you.

And then they say: “Can we do more of this?”


The Challenge: A Fair Fight?

Let’s make it fair. Take a common business requirement—say, a budget review process.

Invite all the tools to the table:

  • SAP
  • Workday Adaptive Planning
  • Anaplan
  • Power Query
  • Power Automate
  • Python
  • Modern Excel influencers

Ask them: how would you enable budget holders to review, flag, and the finance team to amend financials in time for monthly close?

Seal your answers. Then compare them to what I can deliver in Excel using hub-and-spoke architecture.

The comparison isn’t even close.

In agility, affordability, speed, accuracy, and transparency—the spray gun wins. Every time. And it’s already in your hands.


The Opportunity in the Status Quo

This equilibrium between IT systems and user spreadsheets has lasted decades. Each side stays in its lane. Each tolerates the pain.

But that pain—Excel Hell—has created the conditions for change.

And I’ve demonstrated that change.

The spray gun doesn’t destroy Excel—it fulfills its promise. It elevates Excel from tool to platform. From a place to paint purple squares to the means to paint the whole wall—fast, accurate, scalable.

And we do it without replacing Excel.

We use Microsoft Office (of which Excel is part)—what every enterprise already has.


Final Thought: What’s Not to Like?

This isn’t vaporware.

It’s not a pitch for another SaaS subscription or black box you can’t inspect.

It’s a methodology.

A transformation.

A switch.

So the next time someone says “just do it in Excel,” you might want to ask:

Which Excel? The square… or the spray gun?


Author’s Note:
If you want to see this transformation firsthand—what hub-and-spoke Excel looks like, how it outperforms ERP, how it eliminates Excel Hell—get in touch. I’ll show you what your current tools are truly capable of.

Hiran de Silva

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