One simple way to improve your business’ efficiency is to migrate from Excel into a fully functioning online relational database system. If you think your business could be more streamlined, this article, listing the top five reasons for migrating from Excel to a database, could just be the thing you’re looking for.

Scalability

Ok, so an Excel workbook was a quick and easy way to get started. It allowed you to store your product details, sales inventory, customer information or whatever, in an easy to manage way. There wasn’t much training involved, and it did the job adequately.
That said, if you’re starting a business that you expect to grow rapidly, Excel workbooks are a pretty bad way to store your critical information. Why? Because in no time at all, they won’t be able to cope with the data volume. Don’t worry, though, because if you did start out with Excel, it’s not too late to migrate. Just as long as you get out now. The longer you leave it, the greater the disruption will be.

Data Consistency

So you’ve decided to put all your critical information in an Excel workbook and save it to your local hard drive. That’s fine, right up until the point when other people need to access it too. What happens if you give a copy to a sales rep and you make changes to the original? If many people use the same data, consistency could be a real problem, which could cost you money, time or both. It’s almost inevitable that the data will become inconsistent somewhere, leading to angry customers or loss of revenue.

Data Integrity

Excel provides little to no means of validating the data you put in. For instance, you might have strings in number fields, which in some cases is OK. However, should someone input text into a column that you use for calculations, problems will arise. A database solves this problem by ensuring all your data is in the correct format. Just specify the column type when you create the table, and you can rest assured that your data will be reliable.

Security

A basic password and the operating system are the only means available of securing an Excel workbook. Imagine if you had confidential data and it fell into the wrong hands. In this day and age, it wouldn’t take much expertise for someone to be able to crack a basic password. If a cracked workbook contained confidential information, you might end up getting sued. You might say that if you store sensitive data, you owe it to your customers to make it secure.

Internet compatibility

MS Excel is not designed for Internet use. True, there are workarounds such as virtual private networks, but this is costly, slow and unreliable. If you have many users, Excel is not a long term solution. No, what you need is a database solution that was designed to be used over the Internet.

Excel workbooks are OK for one man bands that don’t expect their business to grow much. For everyone else, they’re a liability. Migrating (here is how to import data from excel) to a fully-fledged database system like Worksheet Systems would improve scalability, data integrity, data consistency and internet compatibility. In this day and age, any business worth its salt needs a reliable, cost-effective database system that can be accessed remotely and securely. Visit worksheet.systems for more information.