By Hiran de Silva
Before we talk about automation… before we talk about what Excel can do…
We need to establish something far more basic:
What exactly is “current practice”?
Because without that, any claim of “a better way” floats in mid-air.
1. The View from Leadership: Designed Work
If you are a finance leader, you already know what current practice is.
You designed it.
You defined the processes.
You recruited the people.
You structured the flow of work.
Whether explicitly or implicitly, you decided:
- How data is extracted from systems
- How it is shaped in Excel
- How reports are produced and distributed
- How frequently this happens
- Who does what
Even if you allow flexibility—“let the team build their own spreadsheets”—the framework is still yours.
So you know:
- How much effort it takes
- How many people are involved
- Where the pressure points are
- Where delays occur
And if asked, most leaders will say:
“Yes, it’s a lot of work… but it’s the best we can do.”
That statement is important.
Because it defines the ceiling of what is believed to be possible.
2. The View from the Ground: Work Inside the Box
Now contrast that with the people doing the work.
For them:
- This is the job
- This is what they were hired to do
- This is what they are measured on
They are not evaluating the system.
They are operating within it.
Their focus is:
- Getting through the workload
- Improving their Excel skills
- Making the task manageable within the time available
They are, quite rationally, thinking inside the box.
And crucially:
Eliminating the work altogether is not part of their agenda.
In fact, in many environments, that would be counterintuitive—even risky.
So effort gets optimised…
…but the existence of the effort itself is never challenged.
3. The External Narrative: The Excel Replacement Industry
There is a third lens.
The one presented to us.
Whitepapers, vendor content, and transformation narratives—
for example, the famous “Nine Circles of Excel Hell” produced by Workday Adaptive Planning—paint a vivid picture of current practice:
- Fragile spreadsheets
- Manual processes
- Endless reconciliation
- Lack of control
- No single version of the truth
This narrative is powerful.
Because it resonates.
Finance leaders recognise it.
Teams experience it daily.
So it becomes accepted as the reality of Excel.
But there is a subtle shift here:
What is being described is not Excel’s limitation…
it is the limitation of how Excel is currently being used.
4. The Research Problem: We Can’t See Inside Organisations
There’s another complication.
From a research perspective:
We don’t actually have full visibility of real-world spreadsheet use.
These processes are:
- Internal
- Proprietary
- Often undocumented
There have been studies—such as those by Raymond R. Panko—and historical datasets (including large spreadsheet collections released after major corporate incidents).
But these are:
- Partial
- Time-bound
- Not fully representative of modern enterprise practice
So unlike other disciplines…
We do not have a clean, observable dataset of “how Excel is used in business today.”
5. The Proxy We Actually Use: Training and Social Media
So where do we look?
In practice, we look at what is being taught.
- YouTube tutorials
- LinkedIn posts
- Paid courses
- Influencer content
This becomes our proxy for current practice.
Not necessarily because it reflects reality perfectly…
…but because it represents the direction people are being guided towards.
And here is the critical insight:
Even this “best available view” is already limited.
It focuses heavily on:
- Manual techniques
- Step-by-step processes
- Workbook-level solutions
- Isolated tasks
So if this is the aspirational layer…
then actual day-to-day practice is typically less efficient still.
6. The Conclusion: A Massive Gap
When you put these perspectives together, a picture emerges:
- Leadership believes the current model is necessary
- Staff operate within it without questioning it
- External narratives reinforce its limitations
- Research visibility is limited
- Training content reflects a constrained mindset
And the result?
Current practice with Excel falls massively short of what Excel is capable of.
Not slightly.
Massively.
7. Why This Matters
Because once you define current practice clearly…
You can see the gap.
And that gap is not about:
- Learning a new formula
- Using a different feature
- Writing cleaner VBA
It is about something far more fundamental:
The difference between doing the work
and designing the system so the work no longer needs to be done.
That is the shift.
And that is where true automation begins.
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