Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Just Me and My Excel
byNeed to make a really big marketing decision? Fire up an Excel spreadsheet (and grab some antacid tablets).
That’s what a majority of executives do, according to a study profiled in a June 20th ClickZ article, “Marketing Execs Excel – to a Fault.”
In this article, writer Enid Burns reviews a new study by Business Performance Management Forum which shows how ingrained the use of Excel is among marketing and product management executives, followed by the use of “gut instinct,” when access to data and high-powered CRM tools are absent.
It’s no secret that marketers want access to better tracking, reporting and decision making tools, but as Burns points out, many execs don’t have access to CRM or ERP tools, even when the company has such tools.
So what to do? Use Excel. It works, but as this article states, it presents flat, static data for pricing and modeling, when marketers need more robust “multi-dimensional approach to analysis.”
As Burns reviews, marketers say that better reporting tools would impact their bottom lines, with a majority of survey respondents claiming they could boost revenue by more than 6%.
And that just might help keep them from reaching for the antacid bottle.
