When the sales team is comprised of one person, a single customer contact spreadsheet will do just fine. But what happens when you start hiring additional reps to meet demand? Sharing and updating a single master spreadsheet across an entire team can become a logistical nightmare fast.
As opposed to a dedicated system that requires access to log in, spreadsheets can be disseminated to anyone, anywhere with the simple send of an email. This makes it scary easy for a disgruntled or dishonest employee to share leads and customer data with external contacts read: your competitors. Establishing an orderly system to divvy up leads and customers when you're working from spreadsheets is tough.
Not to mention that unless you train your reps to take meticulous notes and follow a rigorous documentation process, there's no indication of who last reached out to a customer or prospect, what the content of the message was, and when the interaction took place. Everyone might start out working from the same data Every time a rep makes a change to the master spreadsheet, they'll need to upload it to a central repository for the edits to be communicated to the rest of the team.
And if they forget to do that? Uh oh. Before long, you'll have several versions of the "single" spreadsheet — all with slightly different data. How will you know which one is right? That's quite a messy sales process. If you're hoping for accuracy, don't expect to get it from spreadsheets. It's hard enough compiling all the various versions of a spreadsheet into one master copy, but then managers have to assemble meaningful reports based on the data.
As anyone who has ever tried to report from Excel knows, it's not for the faint of heart. And the more complex your data, the harder reporting becomes. Sure, users can create charts and graphs in spreadsheets. But "create" is the key word.
Assembling any kind of data visualization in a spreadsheet is time-consuming and frustrating. Managers could opt to skip the visuals altogether — after all, they're not necessary. But presenting a spreadsheet rows and rows long is guaranteed to make reps' eyes cross. Data that lives solely on your company's servers can be lost forever if a natural disaster strikes.
Data that lives solely on individual computers can be lost forever if your laptop takes a tumble or gets doused in coffee. Hey, life happens. Granted, your company might not even have a marketing automation system in place. But if it does, and the sales side of the house is operating on spreadsheets, there's bound to be crossed wires and miscommunication.
Formulas can express a variety of processes on sets of data. Common processes include looking up values within a specified range, testing whether values meet certain conditions, carrying out arithmetic operations, counting and transforming data items. Formulas are among the most useful aspects of a spreadsheet, but one of the reasons for their success is that you do not need to enter every formula manually. Spreadsheet programs provide a range of preset functions that encapsulate common formulas, allowing users to apply functions without having to type them in manually.
Preset functions are accessible via buttons in spreadsheet program user interfaces. Common functions include sorting and filtering data as well as carrying out calculations such as sums and percentages.
Spreadsheet programs can transform data sets into various types of graphical displays. In Excel, the Charts section provides the ability to present a data set within a chart or graph. It is not an efficient use of time to perform repetitive calculations for individual cells. If the cells are performing the same function within a particular row or column, the relevant cells can be given an attribute that will dynamically evaluate the values required.
Each cell allows for a near-endless variety of formulas to be utilized. One formula can be seen by summing up the totals in the revenue example above. The formula in the spreadsheet dynamically evaluates the sum for each day or each company.
No need to go back and recalculate. If a specific revenue is updated in one cell, the total will update automatically. Similarly, if a value already used in the calculation is altered, the total cell will reflect the adjusted amount based on the newly edited cell value.
This way, you only worry about inputting and upkeeping the data. The formulas you have designated do the calculations for you. Even if a row is composed of calculated values and every cell is defined with a totally different formula. The total calculation will continue to adjust based on the dynamically changing values of those cells.
Spreadsheets are also equipped with hundreds of preset functions. These functions allow you to easily narrow down or filter your data.
For example, if you had a column tracking the revenue of a specific company with thousands of lines of data. You could easily find the minimum and maximum in all of the data by using built-in functions.
While that is a relatively simple example, there are hundreds of built-in formulas to help you easily manipulate, sort, and extract data. There are many other more complex built-in functions that are useful for specific applications. Such as for math and trigonometry, finances, computer logic, look up and reference, engineering, date and time, and statistical analysis, to name a few.
The preset functions help you do all the heavy lifting so you can more easily find the results you are looking for and be able to use that information accordingly. When you look at a lot of numbers, even in an organized spreadsheet, it is often overwhelming to visualize the bigger picture. However, visual aids and graphs often provide a way to display data that is easily understood. When displaying high-level data for presentations, visual aids are always helpful.
One of the advantages of spreadsheets, like Excel and Sheets, is that they come equipped with a wide variety of different graphs and charts. These can be formulated based on the data you provided. You can send spreadsheet files through local networks or email in a few seconds. Mobile professionals take their spreadsheet with them on notebook computers, tablets and mobile phones, updating information in the field.
Setting up a new spreadsheet is relatively easy, as is adding new rows, columns and formulas to an existing one. A spreadsheet follows a simple grid system, wherein every cell can contain a piece of text, numeric data item or formula. The program imposes no structure on your spreadsheet other than the row-column grid; you set up heading text, rows and columns of data, and formulas wherever you want and in any combination. The cost of spreadsheets ranges from free to a few hundred dollars.
0コメント