Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors
I work at a large firm which has shifted itself from using Excel, to significantly promoting data analytics tools such as Alteryx in place of Excel.<p>One of the MAJOR improvements from using Alteryx is that it is easier to audit and review the process. With Excel you can be down the rabbit hole of data manipulation or formula driven outputs and realise you have made a mistake but cannot find where or how. Or cannot find where you went wrong without recreating the steps followed. The workflow style interface of Alteryx and other data analytics tools allows everyone to see the process from start to finish of how you are getting to your outputs. It can also ingest and handle much larger datasets than default Excel.<p>I honestly believe that we will see a large shift from using Excel to using better suited analytics tools. I cannot think of anything I can do in Excel that I can do in a GUI based data analytics tool. Not to write Excel off completely as will certainly still be using it, but to a lesser extent and not where complex data manipulation is required.