Comparisons
Orbit versus spreadsheets
Spreadsheets win on flexibility and lose on trust. A fair look at where the line actually sits, including the cases where you should stay put.
Marcus Hale
Managing Partner
Nobody wants to read another post about how spreadsheets are holding your team back. They are not, most of the time. A spreadsheet is the most flexible tool most teams will ever use and the switching cost is real.
Where spreadsheets are still right
One-off analysis, modelling, anything where the shape of the question changes every time you ask it. A spreadsheet is faster than any product for thinking, and it should be. Keep it for that.
Where they stop working
The failure is not size, it is repetition. The moment the same sheet is rebuilt on a schedule, by hand, by a person, you have a process with a single point of failure and no audit trail. When that person is on holiday, the report does not happen.
The other tell is disagreement. If two people maintain versions of the same sheet and the numbers differ, the sheet has stopped being a record and become an opinion.
A reasonable line
Recurring and shared goes into a tool. One-off and exploratory stays in a sheet. Most teams do not need to migrate anything, they just need to stop rebuilding the recurring half by hand.
Run your own numbers through Orbit.
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