Are Spreadsheets Sabotaging Your Supply Chain?

Spreadsheet use pervades every corner of corporate life today. More than 200 million people worldwide use spreadsheet applications and about one-third of people spend more than half their working days using them.

Spreadsheets provide great benefit, but also create serious issues. It’s easy to get an answer from a spreadsheet—but it may not be easy to get the correct answer, given:

• General spreadsheet risk due to the limited accuracy of the tool itself and the risk of data and logic flaws introduced by users (researchers estimate 94% of deployed spreadsheets contain errors, and 90% of spreadsheets over 150 rows contain errors).
• Spreadsheet-related supply chain risks that emerge as the supply chain matures (scalability, integration, fragility, siloing, and others).

Supply chain management teams can find themselves severely hampered by chronic spreadsheet shortcomings when performing mission critical activities such as demand planning, sales and operations planning, manufacturing, replenishment and supply planning, inventory optimization, and value chain collaboration.

What are the inherent limitations of spreadsheet applications? What special pitfalls face supply chain teams who force spreadsheets to handle more complexity than they are designed for? This paper explores these questions.