A Satirical Response to “Why Use Excel for Consolidation?”
By Hiran de Silva
Let me start by saying that this is satire.
The examples are exaggerated.
The characters are caricatures.
The humour is deliberate.
But the technical point is entirely real.
Recently, Jason M’Ronne (not his real name) made the observation that people should not be using Excel for things such as consolidation and account reconciliation because there are tools that will do those things for you.
At first glance, that sounds perfectly sensible.
After all, why would you do something manually when there are specialised tools available?
Which leads naturally to the question:
Why wipe your own arse?
Surely there are tools for that.
There are probably SaaS platforms for that.
There are consultants who specialise in it.
There are white papers.
There are webinars.
There are Gartner Magic Quadrants.
There are probably venture-capital-backed startups preparing an AI-powered cloud-native wiping solution as we speak.
So why would anyone do it themselves?
The answer, of course, is that if the task is already simple, convenient, immediate and available exactly where you are, introducing an additional product may not actually improve anything.
And that is the issue.
Not whether specialist tools exist.
But whether they are solving a problem that actually exists.
Take budgeting.
A budget holder sits in front of a spreadsheet.
The spreadsheet is familiar.
The spreadsheet contains the budget.
The spreadsheet is where the work happens.
The spreadsheet is where the thinking happens.
The spreadsheet is where the numbers are entered.
Now imagine there are four hundred budget holders.
When they finish updating their budgets, they click a button labelled PUT.
Nothing gets emailed.
Nothing gets exported.
Nothing gets copied.
Nothing gets uploaded manually.
The budget simply becomes available centrally.
Now the regional manager opens a consolidation workbook.
Clicks GET.
Chooses Region.
The consolidation appears.
Chooses Country.
The consolidation appears.
Chooses Shop.
The detail appears.
Clicks on a number.
Drills into transactions.
All from the same central data source.
No pyramid of spreadsheets.
No chains of links.
No forty-seven tabs.
No ritual sacrifices to the Spreadsheet Gods.
Just data.
Stored once.
Retrieved when needed.
At which point someone says:
Yes, but why not use a specialist consolidation tool?
And that is where the conversation becomes interesting.
Because the question is no longer:
Can Excel do it?
The question becomes:
What exactly is the specialist tool doing that is not already happening?
How much extra effort is required?
Who maintains it?
Who supports it?
What happens when it breaks?
What is the complete journey from Budget Holder A to Consolidated Report Z?
Because if the answer is:
Export from Excel.
Import into Platform X.
Run Process Y.
Export back to Excel.
Then one might reasonably ask:
Why are we taking a bus, a tube train and a helicopter to cross a zebra crossing?
Which brings us to the Zebra Crossing Story.
Imagine a man standing outside Abbey Road Studios.
He wants to get to the other side of the road.
Someone tells him:
Don’t walk across.
There are tools that will do that for you.
Excellent.
What tools?
Well, first there’s Uber Bus.
It takes you half a mile down the road.
Then there’s Uber Tube.
Then there’s Uber Helicopter.
Then there’s Uber Strategic Road-Crossing Platform Enterprise Edition.
By the time you’ve arrived, you’ve travelled three miles and attended two stakeholder workshops.
Meanwhile somebody else simply walked across the zebra crossing.
Ten seconds.
Problem solved.
Now here is the uncomfortable bit.
The entire road-crossing industry depends on people not knowing what zebra crossings are.
Not because the products are necessarily bad.
Not because the products have no value.
But because the sales message requires the customer to believe that crossing the road is difficult.
Once the customer discovers the zebra crossing, the conversation changes.
Suddenly the question becomes:
Do I actually need the bus?
Do I actually need the helicopter?
Do I actually need the platform?
Or was the problem already solved?
The same applies to account reconciliation.
Many people still imagine reconciliation the way it was done forty years ago.
Paper on one side.
Paper on the other.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Circle.
Highlight.
Investigate.
Repeat.
But once data is digital, the process changes completely.
Append.
Reverse signs.
Summarise.
Eliminate zeros.
Investigate the remainder.
The principle is simple.
The automation is straightforward.
The reconciliation can run unattended.
The domain expert arrives at work and reviews exceptions rather than performing clerical labour.
Again, the question is not whether specialist reconciliation software exists.
Of course it does.
The question is whether the user understands what is already possible.
Because ignorance creates opportunity.
If I don’t know what a zebra crossing does, a helicopter suddenly sounds very attractive.
If I don’t know how Excel can consolidate, a planning platform suddenly sounds essential.
If I don’t know how reconciliation works, specialised software suddenly appears miraculous.
And that is why this satire matters.
Not because Jason M’Ronne is wrong to mention specialist tools.
Specialist tools certainly exist.
The challenge is understanding whether the customer actually has a problem before selling them a solution.
Because sometimes the miracle isn’t the helicopter.
Sometimes the miracle is discovering that the zebra crossing was there all along.
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