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Re:Look for the duct tape by fiatjaf on Saturday March 24, 2018 @10:56AM (#16666881)
90% of the people who invent a CRM on a spreadsheet are better off using that flexible spreadsheet they know very well and can change, add or remove features, store anywhere they want etc. than using a stupid CRM software with 3 features, designed around its creator limited imagination only.
Re:Look for the duct tape by reificator on Saturday March 24, 2018 @11:33AM (#16667092)
Yeah. Until they leave for another job and literally no one else in the company can understand the ad-hoc process unintentionally developed over five years of "let's just add this here".

Which is not to say that whatever replaces it is guaranteed to be better, but it will at least have a good start by using the right tools for the job.

Re:Look for the duct tape by realusername on Saturday March 24, 2018 @12:07PM (#16667292)
The issue for the spreadsheet is always around data-integrity, people start typing random things in their Excel and then it's a mess to try to make sense of the data. I would not mind Excel much if it was strongly typed instead.
Re:Look for the duct tape by ModernMech on Saturday March 24, 2018 @12:17PM (#16667357)
But being strongly typed would remove a lot of the usability that makes Excel the most widely used programming language among non programmers.
Re:Look for the duct tape by beefield on Sunday March 25, 2018 @06:39AM (#16671597)
I think there would be space for a middle ground solution where you could define a sheet "type" to something like "datatable" that would enforce data types on columns, only allow data entered a row at a time and if calculated columns were there, would enforce same formula in each row.
Re:Look for the duct tape by fiatjaf on Saturday March 24, 2018 @09:50PM (#16670199)
Perhaps there's something to try in that space.
Re:Look for the duct tape by paulryanrogers on Saturday March 24, 2018 @04:22PM (#16668696)
Isn't that what Microsoft Access was?
Re:Look for the duct tape by ENGNR on Saturday March 24, 2018 @11:00AM (#16666903)
Microsoft Access used to be the real test. By the time they've added a UI and started to get frustrated with one user at a time it's time for a CRUD app and a database
Re:Look for the duct tape by wil421 on Saturday March 24, 2018 @11:54AM (#16667220)
How is a spreadsheet scalable for a large organization? The team or person might be better off but CRMs and other tools help the organization standardize their processes.

What happens when this person leaves? What if business starts booming and you need to scale up? Are you really better off sharing a spreadsheet between a 100 or more people?

Re:Look for the duct tape by Endy on Sunday March 25, 2018 @03:07AM (#16671128)
> How is a spreadsheet scalable for a large organization?

Just gonna focus on this part here. The last offices I worked in (and the last places I even dealt with tech stuff beyond teaching it to primary-schoolers), "Track Changes" was simply a godsend. One person "owned" the spreadsheet and could allow use or not; and we had it hosted on OneDrive - of course we all had the OneDrive client on our work PCs and it could tie into Excel natively, so we were all using the same document.

If the entirety of a large org needs the same spreadsheet, you're probably looking at a scenario where they really need multiple sheets, but haven't figured out how to do references to other files and sheets yet. But using Track Changes and having one person designated as Owner so that that one individual makes a decision to approve/disapprove all potential changes makes it much easier to let multiple people work together.

> What happens when this person leaves?

That's a management / succession-planning issue. Ad-hoc solutions shouldn't be kept secret, and allowing employees to just go off and do as they please in that regard is a major issue. If all work-related documents are required to be stored in the company cloud, and you storing a new doc alerts your manager, etc., you'll be able to deal with this much easier. One place I worked for a few weeks on a project did a reset on employee's terminals every Friday at around 7PM, and anyone who claimed they lost data or progress from that on Monday was in trouble, because they didn't save company-related data to the document & data server (which obviously did not get reset) - meaning they'd done something against company policy that they'd been told about the day they were hired.

Re:Look for the duct tape by lev99 on Saturday March 24, 2018 @11:11AM (#16666962)
The person that invents the CRM spreadsheet is better off. However, that spreadsheet is usually harder to share with the rest of the company. If the spreadsheet has more than 1 user than it might be worth a SaaS.
Re:Look for the duct tape by matte_black on Saturday March 24, 2018 @12:07PM (#16667297)
Just use a google sheet and you’re good for a long time.
Re:Look for the duct tape by lev99 on Monday March 26, 2018 @01:59PM (#16680978)
It depends. Sheets with multiple users is a bad smell to me.