Santiago
Pérez
A familiar scene plays out in supply chain organizations everywhere. A dashboard sits on the screen. The numbers look reasonable until someone asks a simple question.
“Is this the latest version?”
No one answers right away and that pause matters. It signals that spreadsheets have crossed a line from helpful tool to critical infrastructure. Nothing is technically broken. Excel is performing exactly as it was designed to. Over time, however, these files stop supporting decisions and start determining how fast an organization can move.
Very few organizations deliberately choose to run their supply chain through spreadsheets. It happens gradually as operations expand and vendor relationships multiply.
A report needs to be pulled quickly but the systems don't line up the way they should. A supplier sends an update by email. Someone builds a file to connect the dots. It seems to work, so it sticks. The file is reused, shared, and adapted for a slightly different purpose.
Over time, those files become the connective layer holding processes together:
By the time we begin working with an organization, Excel often touches far more of the operation than leadership realizes. Common touchpoints include: planning inputs, execution updates, field data and leadership summaries. Files move across teams and regions, sometimes daily.
Spreadsheets survive because they’re easy to use. They allow teams to move forward when formal systems fall short. In the early stages, they accelerate progress but as complexity increases, they begin to introduce friction. The cost rarely shows up as a dramatic failure but rather accumulates gradually and often goes unnoticed.
When spreadsheet risk comes up in executive conversations, the focus is usually on errors like a bad formula or a missing value. Those problems are real, but they’re not what slows organizations down the most.
The real cost shows up in time. Not the time people spend working, but the time lost before decisions can be made.
Consider the hidden workflow:
By the time a number reaches decision makers, it has passed through multiple hands and transformations. The effort feels disciplined, but the time spent preparing the data often exceeds the time spent using it.
We regularly meet analysts whose weeks revolve around keeping a single spreadsheet alive. They know every tab, every dependency, every place it might break. Their job isn't about uncovering insight rather more about maintenance.
The effect slowly compounds and less noticeably. Decisions start to arrive later than they should. Signals about demand shifts or operational constraints surface after the window for proactive action has narrowed. The organization believes it is working rigorously, yet it is often repeating validation cycles rather than advancing understanding.
In one manufacturing organization we worked with, leadership pushed back hard on a set of analytics dashboards. The numbers didn’t match what they believed was happening on the floor. After digging in, the dashboards turned out to be correct. The problem was further upstream.
What we found:
When you can’t trust the accuracy of the data, that's when things get uncomfortable. The analytics team ends up defending the numbers instead of supporting decisions. Conversations shift away from action and toward reconciliation.
Once trust erodes, speed goes with it. And speed is rarely optional in supply chain.
Spreadsheets can hold up surprisingly well in smaller environments. But growth changes the math.
As product lines expand, facilities multiply, and supplier networks widen, those same files become interdependent webs. What used to be one file becomes many. Versions multiply and workarounds stack on top of workarounds. The spreadsheet still works, technically, but the organization feels heavier. Modifying one data point risks destabilizing another.
We saw this clearly with a growing industrial company that relied on a web of complex Excel files to run operational reporting. The files contained macros, manual refreshes, and hidden dependencies. Each file had evolved over years and represented institutional knowledge.
The consequences:
Spreadsheets work, until they don’t. You rarely see that moment coming. It builds gradually, then hits all at once. When that happens, spreadsheets stop helping the organization keep up. As spreadsheet use expands, fragmentation expands with it.
Operations works from one version. Finance maintains another. Sales sends files downstream. Suppliers email updates that have to be consolidated manually before anyone can see the full picture. Every handoff introduces interpretation. Every transformation adds delay.
By the time leadership reviews a consolidated report, it becomes harder to trace how many adjustments happened along the way. When something feels off, the investigation begins at the surface and works backward through layers of files.
And the more those files carry your logic, your assumptions, and your coordination, the more they quietly define your limits.
Spreadsheets rarely collapse dramatically. They absorb strain, stretch to accommodate new demands, and multiply in number. Until one day, the organization feels heavier than it should. Making decisions takes longer than they used to. While nothing appears visibly broken, overall performance begins to feel constrained.
In Part 2 of this series, we will explore the transformative changes that occur when organizations move beyond spreadsheet dependency, and what supply chain leaders stand to regain when decisions are built upon integrated, trusted data rather than fragile, isolated files.
