Excel vs Low-code Platforms: Choose the safest option

Disclaimer: Excel is a fantastic tool and we use it for many different things. Everyone has access to company sheets, Excel can be linked to various external systems and become an integral part of the Office environment. The program is easy to operate.

Still, Excel in 2019 has been overtaken by low-code platforms: the safer, more sustainable and more advanced big brother. Low-code platforms can do everything Excel can do, but better. We list some of the benefits for you.

Compliant to GDPR

Low-code platforms are safer. More watertight, especially if you look at them from a privacy legislation perspective. We can illustrate this nicely on the basis of the following case. Suppose you document purchase and sales orders including the address and contact details of your customers. If you do this in an Excel sheet, everyone can work with it. That’s a big plus.

It also means that every individual within your organization is automatically authorized to do so. You can set a password, but once this is on the street, the same applies to all personal information you work with. Low-code platforms offer the possibility to provide role-based access to the data, documents, and workflows. Security risks are limited and the control ensures that access rights are only granted to employees for whom certain data are relevant.

One truth

Secondly, low-code platforms overcome human errors and increase the user-friendliness of business documents. A platform is centrally stored in the cloud, anyone authorized to do so can access it from any desirable location and device. Once a user is logged in there is only one version to which they have access.

This is very different compared to Excel. Files can be stored in different locations, copied and pasted and it even happens that entire files are accidentally deleted. Version problems are often inevitable, however unintentional the mistakes of employees may be.

With a low-code platform, on the other hand, there is a single source of truth. Mistakes are never irrevocable, because everything is safe in the cloud. And because there is only one truth, you can trust your employees better and they have more confidence in their own actions.

Universal platform

Dependence on individual document managers is also a thing of the past with low-code platforms. When Excel is used, there is often one administrator who has created the sheet and knows all functionalities. As soon as this employee is unavailable, their knowledge will also be lost.

Consequence: months later, this former employee must still be called to ask how cells can be modified or how complex formulas in the sheet actually work. Users of low-code platforms do not have to be data experts. The platforms are a visual representation of the database around which they are built, and employees only have to fill in a form to ‘do it right’.

So do not be mistaken: process-based Excel sheets are often work processes that are crucial for your organization. So make sure that safety is guaranteed and that risks of loss or misuse of documents are kept to a minimum. Want to know more about the possibilities of a low-code platform to achieve this? Feel free to contact us.