Most companies don't suffer one big spreadsheet disaster. They live with hundreds of small ones every month. It happens so often, it starts to feel normal.
Formulas overwritten. Files emailed instead of shared. Forecasts that don't quite add up. You fix it, move on, and tell yourself it's fine… until it isn't.
In 2005, Eastman Kodak discovered that a single spreadsheet error had overstated its costs by US $11 million. It wasn't fraud. It wasn't a system crash. It was one wrong formula buried in a spreadsheet that no one double-checked.
Kodak had to publicly restate its earnings — right when investor confidence was already fragile. That mistake didn't break the company, but it exposed a truth:
For most mid-tier FMCG businesses, spreadsheet "catastrophes" rarely make the news. But the everyday mini-disasters quietly add up, eroding performance month after month.
Here's what this looks like in practice:
They don't explode. They erode performance, accuracy, and confidence. Each month, they cost you money and credibility.
Here's the paradox: spreadsheets work. They're flexible. They're accessible. You can build anything in them. A sales manager can update a forecast in seconds. Finance can run a scenario. No IT tickets. No waiting. No red tape.
This is precisely why they persist. And why they're so dangerous.
The problem isn't that spreadsheets can't handle the job. The problem is that spreadsheets have no visibility into what's changed and why. A formula gets overwritten. A file gets emailed instead of uploaded to the shared drive. A critical assumption bakes itself into a hundred downstream calculations. By the time someone notices, it's everywhere.
Spreadsheets were designed for individual analysis. They were never meant to be the backbone of an integrated planning process across multiple teams, departments, and decision-makers.
When spreadsheet chaos becomes normal, something insidious happens:
None of these are spreadsheet problems. They're visibility and governance problems that spreadsheets enable.
The research is clear: spreadsheets aren't fit for purpose in multi-person environments with complex data sets and diverse applications. A study by the University of Hawaii found that 88% of spreadsheets contain errors. Most companies have dozens of critical spreadsheets. The maths is grim.
Spreadsheets work brilliantly for individual analysis. They crumble when you layer on collaboration, governance, and scale.
Yet here's the paradox that keeps companies trapped:
People get scared off replacing spreadsheets with a dedicated system. The horror stories are legendary — multi-year implementations, six-figure price tags, IT bottlenecks, losing the flexibility that made planning work in the first place. The thought of ripping out Excel and replacing it with enterprise software feels like trading a screwdriver for a nuclear reactor.
So companies stay stuck. They know spreadsheets are broken. They're terrified of the alternative.
We looked at how people actually perceive the problems in Excel — the real pain points that erode confidence and cost money — and designed a tool that eliminates all of the risks and inefficiencies, but maintains all of the flexibility.
We didn't build another enterprise system that forces you into rigid workflows. We built a planning platform that:
This is integrated planning without the pain. Spreadsheet flexibility with enterprise governance. The best of both worlds.