People do need an alternative to Excel, but it must address the issues Excel has, not compete on the same ground. One example: data consolidation. Try consolidate 30 excel files from 30 different people across the globe and you will be asking why nobody is providing a better solution.
As an analyst/controller I work with Excel every day, let me know if you want to know about issues with Excel, there are tons of problems to solve.
Our core business case is to address the problems of distributed business processes implemented in spreadsheets. We want to continue to offer the flexibility of the spreadsheet paradigm whilst addressing the most weaknesses of the current paradigm.
This short video (when its finished) will be the centerpiece of the new release:
http://vimeo.com/25937882
Do people really need an alternative to Excel? I would suggest that as soon as someone has gotten to the limits of Excel, then they would start looking at a programming language as an alternative, not at a "more better Excel".
Andrew, have you ever worked in a business environment? People get scared for some humble sql, how the hell are you going to convince them to learn programming (also vba is a problem)? Plus, what about cost/opportunity? Would you prefer to pay 10/20$ per month per person to improve their excel efficiency or either paying custom code or coding training?
Point is, there must be a market out there for some functionalities that Excel does not have, it also should not be that difficult to build such a solution (call it a hunch, but I think with nosql that should be really easy to do). But the whole thing requires stopping thinking logically (of course excel makes no sense) and start thinking business(ly) (how do I get people to understand and use my solution).
You're both right. Spreadsheets are already a (poor) programming paradigm called Functional Reactive. I say it's poor but it does something amazing: it doesn't require structure, planning, and forethought; and it can be used by anyone. The problem is that these constraints pull at each other: make it more powerful and you make it less useful.
I think it's only when you make a complete rewrite from the bottom up in another paradigm that you can extend the power while retaining the usefulness.
'I think it's only when you make a complete rewrite from the bottom up in another paradigm that you can extend the power while retaining the usefulness.'
True, but again, look at the users. People with very poor IT knowledge and very scared of change. Any new solution pointing at this market will have to:1) be as easy to use as excel; 2) much better than excel (why change otherwise?).
I think that being better than excel overall is impossible, but looking into specific businesses and uses it should be.
David, if you have something better than excel in mind, I'll be glad to hear that.
Personally, I have been giving it a lot of thought and I can't come up with a complete better solution. But other (Palo, Hyperion) seems to make money on solutions that do not change the excel paradigma.
The key question is what are the users trying to accomplish with Excel? There may be ways for them to continue to use Excel and gain the benefits of a more complex reporting environment.
The base of users with knowledge of Excel is very large. Most organizations have a built in base of knowledge of Excel. Why swim upstream and go against that. Try to make Excel work in that environment.
Take a look at www.excelcube.com. It may be helpful.
No problem, when I have time I send you an email. I would like to discuss this myself to see if there are cheances to build something in this direction.
I would love to hear about these problems, too. I'm currently planning (as in not having started programming yet) a web app that allows people to manage all sorts of data. Which of course would also include financial data. I'm always looking for new use-cases.
Interesting topic as I recently spent three months on customer discovery for a CS researcher/wannabe entrepreneur who developed a spreadsheet consolidation (combining data from disparate sources) solution. My discovery work was primarily focused on enterprise. The primary finding was that everyone in enterprise claimed that they have the problem but the pain is not high enough for them to consider buying a solution that only consolidates data. They were looking for end-to-end solution.
Have you looked at google fusion table and google refine? These are powerful tools in same space for non-enterprise applications.
As an analyst/controller I work with Excel every day, let me know if you want to know about issues with Excel, there are tons of problems to solve.