Summary: If your business still relies heavily on spreadsheets, here are 6 difficult questions to ask yourself. If you can’t answer all of these questions with absolute certainty, it’s time to consider the benefits of moving your data away from spreadsheets and into a database.

Does your company or business department rely on spreadsheets for reporting, decision-making, budgeting, or any other mission-critical tasks?

If so, see if you can answer these questions:

How many employees have access to these spreadsheets?

How many employees have edited these spreadsheets?

Have any of these spreadsheets been shared outside of your company?

How many different versions of the same spreadsheet exist across your organization?

Do any of these critical spreadsheets contain errors?

What happens if these spreadsheets become corrupted or are accidentally deleted?

If you’re like most companies who rely on spreadsheets, you can’t answer most (or all) of those questions. You can’t control who edits a spreadsheet. You can’t control who shares it with whom. You don’t know if your spreadsheets contain errors, but they probably do.

Wouldn’t you rather know where your data is located? Wouldn’t you rather control who can access and edit your data? Wouldn’t you sleep better knowing your data is regularly backed up?

These are just a few reasons why your data belongs in a database. Moving your data away from spreadsheets and into a database provides security and more control. It improves data accessibility. It creates new options (like mobile apps and better reporting).

To learn more, check out this video. It explains a few advantages of moving your spreadsheets to a database, and shows you how easily you can do it.