QUICK HIT: The Death of Spreadsheets

Microsoft Excel is an excellent software tool with many practical uses but many consider the spreadsheet solution a digital dinosaur, and it could be limiting your productivity and your success. 

According to a new survey out from Centage, which provides an automated budgeting and financial forecasting software, nearly half of CFO's (48 percent) indicated that they needed easier "what-if" scenario testing to achieve the goal of growing revenue. 

For the unfamiliar, What-If Analysis is the process of changing the values in cells to see how those changes would affect the outcome of formulas on the worksheet (in the case of Exel for example).

With 88% of respondents still using spreadsheets for budgeting within their organizations, the amount of those wanting easier testing of what-if scenarios is telling - spreadsheets just aren't cutting it any more considering the pace of business operations today. Is it time to move beyond the spreadsheet? Centage certainly hopes so. Its Maestro Suite of solutions aims to eliminate the time-consuming and often error-prone activities associated with using spreadsheets, revealing how well a business is performing, helping forecast and report on future financial health far more accurately.

"We weren't terribly surprised to see the correlation between CFOs still using spreadsheets and their desire for easier access to what-if scenarios," said David Winterhalter, vice president of marketing for Centage. "Spreadsheets have never been able to provide that flexibility, which is why we developed the Maestro Suite with the most robust forecasting and planning tools available on the market."