Business System Consultation Center - Our Business System ColumnVol.143 2023.09.01 Takahashi Minoru

Fully managing operations in Excel is not necessarily a bad thing

Thank you for your interest and continued support.
This is Takahashi from the Marketing Plan Research Laboratory.


A business system is simply a tool used for work
not a magic wand that makes dreams come true.


Even if the goal was to save time and effort,
it is also true that introducing a new system
it is also true that new tasks and new burdens arise.


In the past, business systems were
were often used simply as a “replacement for manual methods (paper, pencils, calculators, slips, ledgers),”
,
but these days, with the widespread use of PCs (or rather, the widespread use of Excel and the internet),
I feel that opportunities to introduce systems
have drastically decreased.
Whether it’s Excel, manual processes, or off-the-shelf software, the fact that some kind of system
is evidence that some form of system has become widespread


With today’s systems, while labor savings are certainly a factor, they are not the top priority;
・Adjusting management levels (making management stricter or more lenient)
• Eliminating manual verification errors (by performing electronic verification using barcodes or unique codes)
・Expanding the system’s scope (e.g., sharing specific information within the system with other departments or business partners)
・System integration (such as referencing data from existing third-party systems to activate functions within the system)
・Planning for the future today (scheduling, workflow planning, reservations, assignments, and staffing)
These themes are often included.


As the purpose of a system becomes more complex,
the number of scenarios in which the system is used in daily operations increases,
the number of "things to remember," "things to watch out for," and "changes in preceding/subsequent processes and business rules" also increases,
which often leads to a significant operational burden for certain tasks.
Furthermore, deploying and mastering a new system requires a certain amount of time and cost for each staff member.


When people intuitively interpret the above and feel that “my workload has increased since the system was implemented,”
is a common occurrence.
However, since the system allows us to do things that were previously impossible,
we should accept to some extent that the amount of administrative work we previously didn’t have to do will increase.


Keeping the system’s purpose in mind, if the time spent on PC operations increases—or, conversely, decreases overall—
and, if it does increase, what level of increase is likely to be acceptable
We recommend selecting a system after considering these factors in advance.


That's all, Thank you for reading.

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