For the SMB market, spreadsheets have long been a staple in office productivity and the go-to solution for various tracking purposes for decades. For good reason, I might add, since the first implementation of digital spreadsheets in 1963 revolutionized the way organization keep their critical records on file. But times are constantly changing, and for growing businesses, using spreadsheets to track important business functions and assets is becoming more antiquated than ever. Spreadsheets are great at several things, and have their place, but they are not suited to the constantly evolving demands and frequent growth required of modern businesses when it comes to tracking inventories, compliance status, evolving risks, and performance tracking. Among many failings, spreadsheets suffer from an inability to scale with organizational growth, difficultly in maintaining an accurate version history, identifying who has made changes, and managing data deduplication.
For growing businesses, spreadsheets are inflexible and limited in their capabilities. Since spreadsheets have the annoying propensity to be distributed via email, the data becomes outdated almost as soon as the recipient opens the attachment. Even when stored in shared collaboration sites like SharePoint or OneDrive, it can be difficult to keep the data it contains current. Automation is one of the greatest industry trends over the past twenty years, and it’s extremely relevant here. Without investment in custom software or a pre-built third party offering, automating the record keeping process is nearly impossible. Take into consideration that spreadsheets have a limited capacity for report generation, and you’ve got yourself a business process that is in dire need of an update.
The solution, then for keeping track of what matters most, is an integrated platform that prioritizes automation, executive reporting, and performance management to keep your business on track. We’ve discussed the benefits in previous blogs about the benefits of automation in higher education, and many of those points ring true here. Automated platforms that maintain an accurate device inventory, track key performance metrics, and keep up with your organizations’ compliance status are the holy grail for businesses looking to ditch the headache of maintaining outdated spreadsheets. These services are far more scalable than Excel spreadsheets, since they are much easier to maintain at scale and are designed to grow with your business. Automated platforms are also a big win for executives since they aggregate performance tracking and compliance data into an easily digestible format for effortless comprehension by key decision-making leadership. When key decision-making executives can see the tangible effects of their investment in the organization’s cybersecurity structure, it allows for much more targeted and meaningful spending towards ensuring complete organizational compliance.
The moral of the story is this; ditch the spreadsheets when it comes to critical matters, and upgrade to something that works better for your business. Contact us today to see how CnSight can help you modernize your record-keeping, automate your performance management, and revolutionize your reporting capabilities. CnSight helps organizations achieve continuous monitoring and performance management automation with a dedicated platform that will increase organizational efficiencies, automate the tracking of organizational assets, and track ongoing compliance efforts.
