A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

PLM vs Excel: Bullfight and Prohibition

PLM vs Excel: Bullfight and Prohibition
Oleg
Oleg
27 July, 2015 | 2 min for reading

plm-spreadsheet-bull-fight

PLM has love and hate relationships with Excel spreadsheets. PLM vendors are spending marketing dollars campaigning to replace Excel. The last post by Lionel Grealou caught my attention during the weekend. Navigate to read PLM vs Excel post here. In addition to to almost traditional confirmation that PLM can outperform Excel spreadsheet, I noticed an interesting statement about the fact some organizations are prohibiting availability of Excel reports. This is a passage I captured:

Some organizations considered removing access to import from / export to Excel from their PLM applications to limit uncontrolled usage of data and reports. Most PLM applications now have advanced data search, live feed dashboard which can be tailored to business needs, with Excel-like features for data mining, profiling, compiling, formatting, presenting in various chart for analysis.

The comparison of PLM vs Excel capabilities for BOM management looks like a bullfight. But honestly, I’m not sure who is who in this fight. PLM vendors are fighting excel spreadsheets for decades with no visible success. The number of whitepapers and sales materials trying to convince users how much damage Excel can do is skyrocketing. But customers are still using Excel.

To remove an access to Excel reports is actually something new and unexpected. I had a chance to see many situations when IT was developed bunch of Excel-based solutions to eliminate the need of end users to touch complex enterprise systems in manufacturing, supply chain and finance. Customers loved Excel and hate complex enterprise software. Which reminded me my very old blog – Why do I like my PLM Excel Spreadsheets with top 5 reasons why I prefer Excel over PLM system. To balance a PLM point of view, I can recommend another post – What PLM need to take over Excel spreadsheets?

What is my conclusion? I’m sure you know that bulls are colorblind. Matadors used red material to mask the bull’s blood. PLM sales materials explaining the value of PLM systems vs Excel spreadsheets is like read caps. Users seems to me colorblind to recognize them. Prohibition also seems to me as a bad way to convince users. Especially in our era of consumerization and total focus on user experience. Enterprise UX is going through the paradigm shift. Old, bulky, cumbersome, weighty and hard to use environment that can block a productive flow will be replaced with new tools. It is all about the need for speed. When each function engineers need is “15 clicks away”, you cannot expect company to perform well. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Image courtesy of vectorolie at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
27 April, 2009

In the last few posts, I wrote about how you can use Enterprise 2.0 tools to improve various processes related...

3 June, 2009

Short and powerful message – 3D is coming! Microsoft announced VR camera availability on xBOX 360. Delivered by 3DVIA Virtools...

11 October, 2012

Globalization is a reality of today’s manufacturing environment. It is no unusual to have even small companies distributed across the...

30 December, 2024

In this fourth installment of the “Rethinking Change Management” series, we dive into the technical architecture and workflow underpinning a...

21 December, 2009

A very short prompt this early European morning. Google is coming to the next Audi A8. Take a look on...

21 September, 2016

The demand for real-time collaboration is getting stronger. The idea to “get your team on the same page” was translated...

20 July, 2024

The discussion about PLM as a business and PLM as a software are not new. When someone asks me about...

12 August, 2020

A little bit more than one month ago, two giant companies, Siemens and SAP announced their partnership to deliver integrated...

15 July, 2009

One of the things that can drive PLM user adoption is ability to provide solution to a bigger user audience....

Blogroll

To the top