Deciding what to do about a business-critical spreadsheet

A decision note for whoever owns the process. A free scan can show that the workbook a business depends on is structurally fragile. It cannot tell you whether that matters enough to act on, or what acting would mean. This is about the decision that follows.

The decision, in short

There are four honest answers, and no scan picks between them: keep the workbook and strengthen the controls around it, move the process onto software you can buy, integrate what you already run so the re-keying stops, or commission a replacement application.

Which one is right is a finding, not a starting assumption. Settling it needs three things no file can supply - what the process is worth when it goes wrong, who is allowed to authorise an exception, and what happens when the person who usually runs it is away.

Where this comes up

Almost nobody decides to run a business on a spreadsheet. It starts as one person's quick fix, spreads because it works, and one day the pricing, the orders or a compliance return depends on a workbook nobody designed for the job. The file has become a system without acquiring any of the things a system needs.

Somebody then runs the free check, out of curiosity or after a near miss, and it comes back with structural warning signs. The person holding those findings usually has no authority to act on any of them. This is the page to send to whoever does.

What the scanner establishes

The Spreadsheet Health Check is free, runs entirely in the browser and never uploads the workbook. It runs 17 checks in four groups, and what it produces is structural warning signs:

  • Key-person exposure - macros, hidden sheets, references no one can trace, formulas too complex to check by reading, and a workbook that explains itself nowhere
  • Broken today - cells already showing errors, circular references, and automatic calculation switched off so the numbers on screen may be quietly out of date
  • Hidden fragility - a formula that breaks the pattern of the cells around it, a rate typed into forty cells instead of one, secret links to other files, and inputs nothing validates
  • Won't scale - a sheet copied per month or per client, the old .xls format, and workbooks near the point where Excel silently drops data

Run the free check

What this does not establish

  • Whether the calculations are right. Every check is structural. A workbook can come back clean and still produce the wrong number, and a workbook full of warnings can be arithmetically perfect
  • What the exposure is worth. Nothing in the file says what it costs when the figure is wrong, how far a wrong figure travels, or who finds out
  • Whether it should be replaced. Replacement is one of four answers and rarely the first one to reach for
  • What the process actually is. Most of the rules live in the head of whoever runs it - which exceptions are allowed, when to override the number, the thing that is always done differently on a Friday - and none of that is in the workbook

Who usually owns this decision

The process owner: the person accountable for the output, not the person who maintains the file. In practice that is a finance director, an operations director, or whoever runs the function the process belongs to.

Whoever ran the scan can describe the fragility. Only the owner can say what the process is worth, who may authorise an exception, and whether changing it is affordable this year. Those three answers decide which of the four routes is right, and they are the reason this decision cannot be delegated back down to the workbook.

The bounded work DBHQ would take on

Understanding and changing one named business process. Where the rules, exceptions and dependencies are already clear enough to quote, that is a fixed-price Production Delivery Sprint with agreed scope and acceptance criteria.

Where they are not, a Delivery Definition answers up to three named questions first, priced and charged on its own. The pack is editable and yours: you can act on it with DBHQ, with your own team, or with another supplier. Migration, training and support are scoped and priced with the work rather than assumed into it.

The delivery routeThe bounded investigationFrom Spreadsheet to System

Deciding what to do with the workbook?

Describe the process it carries, what is stopping it changing and any deadline. DBHQ will establish whether the work fits and whether there is enough information to quote.

Bring me the problemBook a call

I reply within 24 hours

https://dbhq.uk/notes/spreadsheet-process-decision/ · dan@dbhq.uk