Behold, the power of the spreadsheet

Excel often receives an upturned nose from techno-files. Our deep love for technology has allowed up to appreciate the richness of relational data. Our need to manipulate information has transcended SUM() and AVG(). However, the power of the spreadsheet has been mastered by many of our business partners.

On my travels, I have encountered business users with the ability to manipulate information within a spreadsheet with as much effectiveness as a developer. The spreadsheet remains a means for them to perform powerful transformations of data without the need for a deep technical background. Code turns them off, but advanced excel formulas don't. Anyone with a basic understanding of math can comprehend Excel formulas, reducing it's threat level.

Despite the ease of use within the business community, many enterprise architectures ignore this fact and do not offer easy ways for Excel to be utilized to both export and import data by the business users. Personally, I've been burned by the misuse of tools like Excel, since data can be manipulated without the audit trails and validations of the typical system... but it is without question that Excel is a more efficient front end data entry tool for massive amounts of data than many enterprise class systems I have encountered.