By Hiran de Silva
Driving within the speed limit isn’t advanced motoring. It’s basic. But try pulling a wheelie in a traffic jam, and see where that gets you…
For years now, a powerful narrative has dominated LinkedIn posts, YouTube tutorials, and enterprise sales decks:
🧨 “Excel doesn’t scale.”
It’s become an accepted truth. A talking point. A meme. An entire $100B industry has been built around this single, fragile idea—an idea that collapses under scrutiny.
And yet, every day, thousands of spreadsheet users work in Excel environments where scaling is not only possible—it’s happening. Silently. Powerfully. With basic Excel.
Yes, I said basic.
Let’s unpack that.
What Is “Excel” Anyway?
When someone says they “know Excel,” what exactly do they mean?
Because Excel isn’t just one thing. It’s different things to different people. To some, it’s just formulas and formatting. To others, it’s pivot tables and dashboards. To me—and to any serious enterprise architect—Excel is a client in a client-server system. It’s a platform for building distributed business processes.
If that sounds like a foreign concept, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Most people define Excel based on the part of Excel they happen to use. It’s as if people drew the world map but left off Australia—simply because they hadn’t seen it.
But Excel is bigger than that.
Excel, properly understood, is not limited to what’s visible on the screen. It is a front-end client, capable of reading from and writing to external data sources. Capable of centralised, governed collaboration. Capable of scaling—horizontally, vertically, and operationally.
The Basic vs. Advanced Illusion
Let’s talk about what we mean when we say basic Excel.
In the mainstream world, Excel skills are seen like this:
| Basic Excel | Advanced Excel |
|---|---|
| SUM, IF, VLOOKUP | Power Query, DAX, Lambda |
| Cell-based input | Excel Tables, Dynamic Arrays |
| No automation | Power Automate, VBA Macros |
That’s the car park.
That’s the world of the solo spreadsheet user working on isolated tasks, emailing files back and forth, building one-off solutions on their local machines. And yes, in that world, Power Query looks advanced. Because it is—in that world.
But switch environments, and the whole definition flips.
Welcome to the Public Highway
The enterprise is not a car park. It’s the public highway.
In an enterprise:
- Data doesn’t live in cells.
- Spreadsheets are not documents—they are interfaces.
- Processes don’t end with you—they span departments, systems, geographies.
Here’s the twist: what’s considered “advanced” in the car park is worse than useless on the public highway. It’s dangerous. It creates what we call Excel Hell.
Trying to scale a Power Query batch process by sending out 400 templates is like trying to jump traffic on the M25 by launching your car off a ramp. Sure, it’s exciting. But it’s not smart. And it’s not how systems scale.
What does scale?
A spreadsheet with a “PUT” button and a “GET” button.
A central Access or SQL Server table sitting on the shared drive.
A model where each user saves their data centrally, and can retrieve the latest consolidated picture instantly, without merging files or refreshing queries.
This is what I call basic Excel for the enterprise.
Scaling with Simplicity
Let me be absolutely clear:
✅ No Power Query required.
✅ No Python, no DAX, no external SaaS.
✅ No licensing battles with IT.
✅ Just native Excel, a shared database (like Access), and a few lines of ADO code.
And the results?
- Scalable. Handle 400 templates, 1,000 users, or 1M rows.
- Agile. Real-time updates, not batch imports.
- Controlled. One version of the truth. No file chaos.
- Secure. Data lives in one place, not in 400 inboxes.
I’ve delivered this with teams using Excel 97. You don’t need a new Excel. You need a new mindset.
Let’s Talk About Driving
If you learned to drive on a farm, you might think you’re a brilliant driver. You can reverse a trailer. You can spin the wheel with one hand. Maybe even pop a wheelie on your quad bike.
But that doesn’t mean you’re ready for the M25 at rush hour.
Why? Because real motoring isn’t about tricks. It’s about interacting safely, efficiently, and lawfully with other drivers. It’s about architecture. Road rules. Systems.
The same goes for Excel.
What’s advanced in a siloed spreadsheet environment becomes dangerous in a networked one.
And what’s basic—in the right context—becomes revolutionary.
The Real Definition of “Basic Excel”
So here’s my definition:
Basic Excel (for the enterprise):
A workbook that can GET data from a central table and PUT data back—using native Excel tools and a few lines of reusable code.
That’s it.
If you can do that, you can build:
- Budgeting systems for 400 departments
- Global seat booking systems
- KPI dashboards updated by frontline users
- Costing models feeding into boardroom reports
- Real-time reconciliations that used to take days
All of this is scalable. All of this is repeatable. And all of this is basic Excel in the world I operate in.
Conclusion: Beware of Wheelies on the M25
If you’re doing advanced tricks with Excel in a standalone car park—you’re not wrong. But don’t confuse that with enterprise readiness.
On the public highway, the basics matter more.
On the public highway, architecture beats acrobatics.
So next time someone tells you Excel doesn’t scale, ask them this:
“Do you mean Excel? Or do you mean your version of Excel?”
Because scaling Excel isn’t about discovering something new. It’s about discovering what’s already been there—waiting, silently, for someone to drive it properly.
🚦✅
🔍 Want to learn more?
Come see how I’ve used this approach to triple my pay in four major companies. Learn the Digital Librarian Framework, the Hub-and-Spoke Model, and how to turn Excel from a toy into a transformation engine.
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