• May 28, 2009

Excel’s Role in PLM Systems

Among many things in the business world, Excel is used to manage product data and product lifecycles. One blogger in particular, Oleg Shilovitsky, thinks, “The biggest market share in PDM/PLM belongs to Microsoft Excel.” We tend to agree. That means Excel, a simple yet flexible desktop application, is being stretched to meet needs typically reserved for expensive enterprise systems. However, Excel alone was never meant to be a PLM system.

We recently came across Mr. Shilovitsky’s blog dedicated to PLM information and discovered a couple blog entries about Excel: Why Do I Like My PLM Excel Spreadsheet? and PLM Excel Spreadsheets: From Odes to Woes. (Check them out, but they are not required reading for the following post.)

In his two posts, Mr. Shilovitsky communicates his love/hate relationship with Excel.  In some ways, he loves Excel and how it supports his work.  But to balance his rosy picture of Excel, he followed up the post with a second one about the things he hates.  I’d like to draw attention to a few points from these two posts.

First, Excel files, probably more than any other file type, are meant to be shared, but as Mr. Shilovitsky and a couple of his commenters pointed out, there is a lot of pain that comes after files have been shared. Since data is captured in a portable item called a file, it is easy to share that physical file with other people, but if the data ever changes or you only wish to share a portion of the file with someone, Excel, email, and even SharePoint are not an effective solution.

Secondly, the data he typically keeps in Excel is constantly changing, and if other people share the responsibility for keeping the file updated, it soon becomes a complicated mess.  Multiple people end up managing multiple files, even though the ultimate goal is a single consolidated spreadsheet containing everyone’s contribution. As one commenter mentioned, there is no way of “showing historical evolution.” Everyone’s edits and contributions are not recorded for review or audit trails.

Lastly, Mr. Shilovitsky often finds himself asking, “Where are my latest Excel files?” He says, “I’m sure you have asked this question many times. Is it the one connected to your mail? Is it the one on your laptop, or is it the one in SharePoint? When you have multiple Excels, and especially if you have multiple versions of these Excels, you will really be lost.” I would add, if you require contributions from other people, multiple people will be asking the same question about the same file. That is why it’s a good idea to move Excel online, as Mr. Shilovitsky mentions here.

Now, I’ve got great news. Many MAJOR manufacturing companies are using eXpresso to turn Excel into the type of enterprise-class application they need for spreadsheet collaboration. They are able to control an individual’s access to part or all of the file, review changes and file history, and simultaneously open or edit the same file at the same time. There is no more version chaos, no more hard-to-find email attachments, and no more wondering about the relevancy of the spreadsheets being shared.

To read about how other kinds of companies are using eXpresso, check out some of our customer use cases.

Thanks Mr. Shilovitsky for starting the dialog!

• By Gus
• 1 Comment
• Topics: Customer Feedback, Staff Perspectives, Collaboration Online

• May 11, 2009

120% of Excel or Don’t Bother

When we launched eXpresso about a year and a half ago, we were very excited about the idea of paring our exciting Web 2.0 collaboration technology with Microsoft^® Excel. We knew that many businesses were dependant on Excel for day to day operations and that Excel files were meant to be shared. So we discovered a way to bring most of Excel’s features online and joined it with our unique collaboration technology. Slam dunk, right?

Well, almost. It turns out that our customers don’t want most of Excel’s features online. They need all of Excel’s features plus our document collaboration capabilities. While it may be true that most people use 80% or less of Excel’s resources, it turns out that everyone requires a different 80%. For some, conditional formatting and VBA are critical. Others wouldn’t know a macro if it bit them, but they can’t get by without a pivot table. When it comes to Excel, it’s all or nothing.

We heard you loud and clear. The next release of eXpresso will support Excel online. Not an “Excel-like” spreadsheet application. Not a simplified, “lightweight” version of Excel. Not a component of Excel. Excel … but with the added benefits of eXpresso’s collaboration. This sets eXpresso miles apart from other online spreadsheet applications.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, so let me show you what I mean. I’ve uploaded the same file into eXpresso’s upcoming Spring ’09 release and into other spreadsheet applications.

There is no comparison. Google Docs was least like the original Excel file, and Zoho was not much better. Symphony made a valiant effort, but the chart it included somehow displayed additional data and threw the whole thing off. Here are some other things that we noticed these spreadsheet apps lost:

• Conditional formatting
• Pivot tables
• Macros
• Charts
• Inserted images
• Styles and colors
• Linked data across sheets

So now that you can have Excel directly in your browser, why settle for anything else? On top of that, eXpresso gives you complete control over how you can share the same file differently with different people. Oh, and did I mention multiple people can be editing the same file at the same time?

Whether that’s 120%, 200%, or 105% of Excel’s features, that is for you to determine. The point is, now you can do more with your Excel files using eXpresso than you can do with Excel alone. We think that’s pretty cool.

Want to see it in person? Got a file you want to try? Just drop us a note, and we can set up a live demonstration. I’d love to hear about which Excel features you can’t live without.

• By Amber
• 7 Comments
• Topics: Customer Feedback, Product Development, Collaboration Online

• May 8, 2009

eXpresso’s Partner Strategy Mentioned in New York Times

Last week our very own John Howard was interviewed for a New York Times article about the importance of strong partnerships.  Our partners have been an important part of our success, and we look forward to new opportunities as we grow our relationships. The article opens with this:

“All of these major corporations, at some point, have a need for new, innovative products and services because they can’t develop them all in-house,” said John Howard, vice president for business development at eXpresso, which offers an online service that allows people to store, edit and share Microsoft Office documents.

“They look to start-ups for the next great things they want to add to their product offerings.”

In turn, the smaller company can tap into the expansive reach of its bigger partner, which is critical in a downturn, Mr. Howard added. “We can piggyback to some extent on their marketing power.”

Check it out:  Partnerships Based on Service, Not Size

• By Gus
• 1 Comment
• Topics: Partnerships, In the News, Collaboration Online

• May 8, 2009

Do you have a document collaboration strategy?

The dirty little secret is that businesses run on Excel®, PowerPoint® and Word.

Let’s be honest. When you step into a meeting, you don’t bring your PLM system, you bring a spreadsheet. When you report on sales to the team, you don’t bring your Dashboard, you bring a spreadsheet or give a presentation. When you write up contracts, you don’t break out the old legal pad.

Important documents are meant to be shared with other people. No one in business works in a vacuum. We share files constantly, but the problem is that we share them poorly (e.g. attaching them to email, checking them in or out of network or cloud storage) and work on them in a linear transactional manner. It’s no wonder tracking changes and controlling versions is practically impossible.

I recently read an excellent Q&A article about aligning business, customer communications, and document strategies. Kevin Craine, author of “Designing a Document Strategy” made these great points:

“What single aspect of business is critical to profitability yet ‘owned’ by no one? The answer is: the Document. After all, most organizations have an IT director, but how many have a “document director?” The result is a proliferation of documents that do not effectively foster corporate objectives.”

“Most corporate strategies, however, have traditionally overlooked documents as a factor that drives daily business. As a result, vital documents may perform exactly opposite from their intended purpose. What is needed is a document strategy to properly align corporate and IT strategies around the key objectives of the firm.”

“How we manage documents has a great deal to do with how we manage business. A document strategy can help make documents part of the success of a business rather than one of the problems. Yet, only 25 percent of companies have a document strategy.”

Documents, and the people responsible for them, run business. That is why it is critically important to have a solution in place to help you manage how employees distribute and contribute to shared documents. eXpresso not only solves the pain people feel when they need to put the file they created in front of other people, it also provides a business-wide strategy for how people can better collaborate on the files they share.

• By Gus
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• Topics: Staff Perspectives, Collaboration Online