Office is Excel. It trumps consideration of any other suite for many businesses because it facilitates their running. It matters on the sixth floor where the executive offices are.
Data manipulation is a ___domain in which lean never works and Excel is the opposite of lean. Decades of development in a corporate culture that encourages adding features has made Excel excel.
Trimming math functions doesn't make sense because 10,000 more functions never clutter up the user experience. Excel is a programming environment - an IDE which includes drag and drop, a REPL, and macros (with respect to the data layer). It's syntax is simple [yes, I know it wasn't invented by Microsoft] and it's power significant.
It's really the crown jewel in Microsoft's portfolio. It just works.
I agree with this 100% however Excel is also grossly overused in my oppinion. I have seen many cases where companies would (theoretically) have been better off migrating a bunch of the stuff they do in Excel to their ERP system.
My conclusion in most of these cases was that said ERP systems must suck (and that it's really hard to get someone, especially execs so switch IT habits) :D
Not just ERP, but in my experience people use Excel for everything - project management, data cleansing/manipulation/conversion, test scripts, status reports, etc.
All things that can be done better with other tools, but for many people, it's easier to just work with a tool that they know rather than trying to learn a new tool (witness the groans every time a new $PROCESS Management Tool is introduced).
Not saying it's a good or bad thing, just what I've observed.
Data manipulation is a ___domain in which lean never works and Excel is the opposite of lean. Decades of development in a corporate culture that encourages adding features has made Excel excel.
Trimming math functions doesn't make sense because 10,000 more functions never clutter up the user experience. Excel is a programming environment - an IDE which includes drag and drop, a REPL, and macros (with respect to the data layer). It's syntax is simple [yes, I know it wasn't invented by Microsoft] and it's power significant.
It's really the crown jewel in Microsoft's portfolio. It just works.