You hear it all the time — great quality management with spreadsheets isn’t possible. You must give up spreadsheets and exclusively use software to modernize quality programs. We at RizePoint have been guilty of that same rhetoric.  

But recently I realized that even though I use many digital tools to manage my work, I would never give up my comfort zone of spreadsheets. So, it was ridiculous that I would ask quality managers to give up spreadsheets in order to modernize quality management programs.   

The trick is to figure out how to integrate modern, digital tools with spreadsheets, so you can get the best results possible. Our solution — we’ve always made sure customer data is exportable to spreadsheets (and more), so you can interact with your data how and when you like.  

Why We Love Spreadsheets 

Most of us have used spreadsheets our whole careers. From tracking budgets to analyzing data, spreadsheets have been there for us. They are familiar and comfortable. Work life makes sense in spreadsheets.

Most of us have used spreadsheets our whole careers. From tracking budgets to analyzing data, spreadsheets have been there for us. They are familiar and comfortable. Work life makes sense in spreadsheets.

Where Spreadsheets Make Quality Management Difficult

Quality management with spreadsheets can be done, but there are certainly drawbacks. 

1. Spreadsheets can become massive documents very quickly with multiple, complex formulas and many, many tabs. In other words, they easily become unwieldy, error-prone, and scary to open and use. Plus, it becomes difficult to find the information you need or to locate important information, and you’re more likely to break formulas. 
2. There is so much data entry. And when spreadsheets are also collaborative, people invariably step on each others’ toes and human error increases. Sure, you could personally control all your spreadsheets, but then your job becomes mostly data entry, and you may become a bottleneck to getting the right information to the right people at the right time.  
3. While the tools exist in spreadsheets, running analytics and creating reports still involve a lot of manual work and implicit trust in manually entered data and formulas. These tools can be useful for ad-hoc reporting, but reporting falls down when it is used as a source of truth for the KPIs that run your operations. Plus, there is no control — whatever data is entered at the time is what shows up, which may likely include out-of-date data or even using the wrong set of data entirely.  Additionally, it’s difficult to quickly pull up-to-date and accurate reports on-demand and find daily actionable insights.  
4. Storing, connecting, and tracking all your quality-related data in one place isn’t exactly a reality in spreadsheet. Yes, you can create folder structures to organize your spreadsheets, but it’s difficult to get a holistic view of your programs when every spreadsheet must be accessed individually. And if you or your team use “save as” often, you soon have many versions of the same document in the same place, making it unclear which version is the most up-to-date. 

Where RizePoint Quality Management Software Amplifies Spreadsheets

Remember, I’m not going to ask you to give up spreadsheets, but there are ways to amplify your efforts by combining spreadsheets with quality management software.  

1. RizePoint has the infrastructure you need to import, store, connect, and track all your data in one place. It’s fast and easy to find important information and insights, plus there’s no formulas to break. The extra great news is that you can export your data to spreadsheets at any time, so you can digest everything in the comfort of your own spreadsheet software.  You can also view data in visually effective dashboards and reports in the platform, or you can use a grid view that’s very similar to a spreadsheet experience. 
   
2. Data entry almost becomes a non-issue with our world-class auditing app — Mobile Auditor. The app comes with the platform, and it can handle any data gathering you need, from complex audits to simple checklists. Mobile Auditor is fully integrated, so audit data and results are updated automatically in the system, ensuring that you’re always looking at the most up-to-date data. With a more automated system for data gathering, human error can be greatly reduced. Bonus: Auditors love our user-friendly app! 
3. Sophisticated reporting and analytics tools are included, so you can access daily, actionable insights via up-to-date data, and you can produce deeper reports within a few minutes in most cases. In addition to the business-specific reports and dashboards mentioned above, our ask-and-answer functionality ensures that on-demand reporting from your boss isn’t a “stop everything and work on a report for a few hours” affair; it’s a matter of asking the right questions to quickly get a complete, accurate report. 
4. When all your data is stored and tracked in one place, and you can import data from other sources, data management can become a background process rather than an admin activity that requires too much attention. You can easily create holistic views of your entire business, drill down all the way to a single location, or anything in between. And don’t forget, you can export to a spreadsheet whenever you need to.

Our ask-and-answer functionality ensures that on-demand reporting from your boss isn’t a “stop everything and work on a report for a few hours” affair; it’s a matter of asking the right questions to quickly get a complete, accurate report. 

With more standards bodies and government entities working toward digital submission processes, and with the fallout from COVID-19, it’s clear that everyone is moving to more modernized quality management systems and programs. But you don’t have to give up quality management with spreadsheets to modernize. Pairing your well-loved spreadsheets with quality management software, like RizePoint, means you can keep the comfort of your spreadsheets while making your programs more modernized and efficient.

As president of RizePoint, Kari Hensien will never stop using spreadsheets. However, as a champion of continuous quality and modernizing quality programs, she is driven to help people keep their brand promises more efficiently in a way that is comfortable for quality managers. You can contact her at kari.hensien@rizepoint.com.