Either "MS Excel" or "Enterprise BI"

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‘MS Excel’ vs. ‘Enterprise BI’: Why the “Either” “OR” mentality doesn’t work. Published: November 28, 2012 - Fru Louis

ne of the hot topics folks and leaders in the Business Intelligence industries

are dealing with these days is defining the role of MS Excel in the Business

Intelligence landscape. More frequently

than not, the discussion often boils to

deciding whether to use MS Excel as the

main tool for BI, or whether a more robust

Enterprise BI software (e.g. SAS, Cognos,

SAP, QlikView) should be used.

While the specific criteria for deciding which route to take may vary

from company to company, or industry to industry, I feel that asking the question

of using “EITHER” MS Excel “OR” some other Enterprise BI tool for Business

Intelligence is not only misleading – it completely misses the point. To see why,

we’ll look at some analogies.

An ax cuts, but it’s not the most effective tool to cut cheese. A kitchen knife cuts,

but it’s not the most effect tool to cut a tree in the forest. So in doing any cutting

job, it suffices to find the tool(s) that best meet the needs of the job. Same

reasoning applies in the IT world – Business Intelligence to be specific. In most

companies, the bottom line is that data needs to be massaged and understood,

Business Users and Executives need to make decisions, and IT folks need not feel

like they are spinning-wheels with an ineffective technology.

Whatever tool is the most effective in getting a job done should be

implemented and getting stuck in an “EITHER OR” mentality would be akin to

sticking to a habit of using an ax to cut cheese on your kitchen table or using a

kitchen knife to cut down trees in the forest – doing this would not only be

ineffective, it would be plain silly and even dangerous.

MS Excel has proven to be good at small in-your-face massage of data, and that

is what it should be used for. Trying to use it for anything more than that would

be akin to taking a kitchen knife to cut down a tree in the forest – you certainly

don’t want that. On the other hand, more robust tools such as SAS, Cognos, and

QlikView have proven to be more reliable for heavy-weight ETL and data

manipulation. Using them for anything less than that would be akin to cutting

cheese with an ax – again, you certainly don’t want that.

O



Let’s look at another analogy between cars and airplanes to see how the

question of MS Excel vs. Enterprise BI plays out again. Both of them, cars and

airplanes are used for locomotion. If you want to travel on land1, they both

would get you from point A to point B. Now as an example, imagine that you

have a goal of getting from your house in New York (NY) to Los Angeles (LA).

To accomplish this, one thing you might do is use only your car to drive from NY

all the way to LA - a trip

that would probably

take you a couple of

days, a hefty cost on

fuel, wear and tear on

you the driver, wear

and tear on your car,

serious risk of getting into an accident.

The second approach you can use to accomplish this would be to leverage the

strengths of both driving and flying. To do so, you would drive in your car to an

off-site parking near the airport. You’ll park your car and then board an airplane

that would take you from NY to LA. In this case, each of these modes of

transportation— your car, and the airplane — come together and work in

synergy to accomplish your goal.

Using an airplane alone won’t be feasible because airplanes do not leave your

house’s doorsteps; you will need a means to get to the airport. On the other

hand, using a car alone won’t be efficient because the journey would be terribly

long and daunting. So, having an “EITHER” car (driving) “OR” airplane (flying)

mentality won’t work. But by combining the agility and versatility of a car ride,

with the speed and endurance of flight travel, you would be able to get to your

destination in the most effective and efficient manner.

One could draw parallels in this analogy in the way cars can be complimentary

to airplanes to the way Microsoft Excel can be complimentary to Enterprise BI

solutions. MS Excel comparatively is less expensive, with a slightly lower learning

curve and is good for quick and dirty summing, sorting, coloring and standard

graphs E.t.c. But when it comes to large scale data warehouse projects and heavy

weight ETL, MS Excel simply isn’t up to the job.



It is understandable

that with a bit of

tweaking, savvy

power users can

leverage FREE (yes,

FREE as in free air

to breathe) OLAP

in-memory technologies such as PowerPivot to build MS Excel spreadsheets that

can literarily walk outside and compete for the America’s got talent show. For

this types of users, the ubiquity, agility, and versatility of MS Excel clearly wins

the day. But once scaled, with growing needs in the Mobile world and operating

without boundaries or a cohesive business context,

MS Excel becomes error prone, with inconsistent data sources, master data

mismanagement, corrupt files, and inadequate security around data. In cases

like this, a solid enterprise Business intelligence tool is needed. And companies

must consider pulling in the big guns like SAS, Cognos, SAP, and QlikView to do

the job. Knowing when MS Excel alone would suffice or when it’s time to procure

a more robust Enterprise BI tool to complement MS Excel is the million dollar

question here and the solution is neither art nor science. But as I mentioned

earlier, staying stuck in a philosophy of “EITHER OR” is definitely not the way to

go either.

At the end of the day, we must realize that MS Excel and Enterprise BI solutions

are not mutually exclusive. If nothing else, they should serve to complement

each other. Just like the way a car ride complemented the air plane ride in the

analogy above to take a user from NY to LA – MS Excel should be able to

complement a more robust Enterprise BI solutions to meet the needs of power

and non-power users.

Key take Away:

Always try to use the right tool for the right job

MS Excel and Enterprise BI solutions are not mutually exclusive

Recommended Read:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg413261.aspx

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