Business Intelligence13.09.26·8 minIT →

    Excel alternatives for company reporting: when and how to move on

    Quick answer

    Excel stops being the right tool for company reporting when the same numbers are rebuilt by hand every month, when two people produce two different versions of the same KPI, and when decisions wait for a file. The practical alternatives are a BI tool connected to your source systems (Power BI, Metabase, Looker Studio) for standard reporting, or a custom reporting layer when the business logic is proprietary. A migration of a real monthly reporting pack typically costs 8,000-20,000 € and takes about six weeks.

    The three signals that Excel is no longer enough

    One: the monthly pack takes more than half a day of manual work. Two: two departments quote different values for the same indicator because each keeps its own copy. Three: nobody can answer 'why is this number different from last month?' without opening five files. Any one of these means the cost is no longer the licence, it is the hours and the wrong decisions.

    What the alternatives actually are

    A managed BI tool (Power BI, Metabase, Looker Studio) connected directly to ERP, CRM and accounting covers standard reporting well and is the cheapest path. A custom reporting layer makes sense when the calculation logic is proprietary — margin per job, owner scoring, dynamic pricing — or when data must be reconciled across systems that disagree. Spreadsheets stay useful for ad-hoc analysis, not as the system of record.

    Costs and timing of a real migration

    Connecting sources, agreeing definitions and rebuilding a monthly reporting pack usually costs 8,000-20,000 € and takes around six weeks: two weeks to fix indicator definitions, two to build pipelines, two to validate against the historical numbers. A targeted integration between two existing systems sits at 5,000-12,000 €. The saving to compare it against: six hours a week of manual reporting is roughly 10,000 € a year.

    How to migrate without losing trust in the numbers

    Run the new reporting in parallel with the spreadsheet for one full cycle, reconcile line by line, and only then switch off the manual version. Freeze one written definition per KPI — formula, source, owner, refresh frequency. Migrate the ten indicators that drive decisions first, not the eighty that exist.
    FAQ

    Frequently asked questions

    Is a BI tool always cheaper than custom reporting?

    For standard indicators, yes. It stops being cheaper when the logic is proprietary or the data has to be reconciled across systems: the modelling work then costs more than the tool, and a custom layer is easier to maintain.

    Can we keep Excel for some things?

    Yes, and you should. Excel remains excellent for ad-hoc exploration and one-off models. What has to move is the recurring, official reporting that people take decisions on.

    How long before the first working dashboard?

    Two to three weeks for a first dashboard on real data, six weeks for a validated monthly pack replacing the manual one.

    Who does the data work — us or you?

    Soim maps sources, builds the pipelines and validates against your historical numbers; your team owns the KPI definitions. Code, data model and full open-format export stay yours.

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