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Comment by ExoticPearTree | Hacker News Reader

The world runs on Excel. Contrary to popular belief that ERPs and what not is what companies use. Big companies use Excel to verify the ERP data and reports.

There was an article shared here on HN sometime in the middle of last year that broke down how versatile Excel is and how different companies are trying to steal just a niche use of Excel (I remember reading about Airtable doing the automation bit much easier than in Excel, some company doing charts easier than Excel and so on). I wish I could find it again.

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I think you're looking for Excel Never Dies on Packy McCormick's Not Boring newsletter [0]. Featured previously on HN [1].

[0]: https://www.notboring.co/p/excel-never-dies [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32346288

Yeah, that was it. Thanks for the link, I'm gonna bookmark it now.

"The world runs on Excel" - I think it's true and we should bring AI tooling inside the spreadsheet, not build yet another SaaS silo from where your data will never escape.

Also opens a lot of doors for integrating with private tools or data sources, especially with MCP tooling or such. I published a POC of what I mean at https://supersheets.ai/.

Why do you think have we not been able to evolve beyond this in the enterprise world?

In simple terms: because it is a tool everyone uses and knows to some degree. It has all the bells and whistles to do pretty much what you want with it. And, I guess one overlooked fact: the data is portable, everyone* in the world has Excel.

My view is that if you switch companies, and at the last you used SAP and the new one you have to use Oracle, it is going to be a learning curve with very little added value for you (except the fact that now you know to proprietary systems). With Excel, well, it is going to be the same Excel, just different data.

The fact that it's already installed on almost everyone's computer in any given corporate environment also has a lot to do with why it's so widely used for these types of things I think - noone needs to ask permission to get a new app installed, or jump through hoops to pay for another new piece of software.

For the same reason Python is so popular. It's not the best at anything (besides being really easy to use), but it's top 5 at all the things that matter. When your use case outgrows Excel, then yeah, invest in a specialized system... when budget allows (which is never).

The same reason we have not been able to evolve beyond a spoon. Once a tool matches a use-case really well, the best you can do is make it worse for the sake of being modern

as someone who works in the enterprise world as an accountant with some programming experience...

excel is flexible and easy for reporting/analysis for data of varying sizes from small to not ginormous whereas doing anything in an ERP requires an, often, low paid SWE with a thick accent in a different time zone at, comparatively, high cost and big delay

i.e., I can often solve problems in excel in an afternoon that would take months to solve with one of these SWE's

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