A Spreadsheet Is Not a Business System, So Why Are People Treating It Like One?

Every business we work with has two systems running side by side. There's the official software, the stuff that got signed off, budgeted and rolled out properly, and then there's the spreadsheet nobody remembers commissioning, the one that somehow ended up running half the operation anyway.

There's actually a name for this

Sociologist Diane Vaughan came up with the term while studying something far more serious than office spreadsheets, the Challenger space shuttle disaster. She called it the normalisation of deviance, where small departures from how things are meant to work become normal simply because nothing's gone wrong yet.

Baytech Consulting applies the same idea to everyday data workflows, and it's a surprisingly good fit (uncomfortably good, if we're honest). A quick fix works once, then twice, then becomes the way everyone does it, without anyone really deciding that it should. It just sticks, until the day it doesn't.

The spreadsheet isn't actually the villain here

There's nothing wrong with a spreadsheet. It does what it was built to do, perfectly well. The problem starts when it becomes the system of record for something important, without anyone ever actually deciding that's what it should be.

Forbes has written about the same problem in enterprise settings. Formula errors can sit there for months without anyone noticing, and often the person who understands how the whole thing works is the only one who knows why a particular calculation is even there. Then there's the version control problem, since once a file's been emailed around and changed by three different teams, knowing which one is actually correct can become a job in itself. None of this means your spreadsheet is bad. It just means it's been asked to do a job it was never really designed for.

Where commissioned software actually comes in

This is roughly what commissioned software is for, not forcing a team onto something off the shelf that doesn't quite fit, but taking the logic that's already working and giving it somewhere sturdier to live. We do this a lot, pricing rules, reconciliation steps, calculations and workflows that ended up trapped inside a spreadsheet, built into something the whole team can use without crossing their fingers.

The business logic doesn't need to change just because the software does. The pricing rule still works the same way, the reconciliation still follows the same logic, the only real difference is that none of it depends on one file, one formula or one person's memory anymore.

The best time to look is before it breaks

You don't have to wait for your system to collapse before calling us (we would actually prefer it if you didn't). Get in touch with our Verasseti team. We'll have a look at what's actually holding your process together, what you like as is, and talk you through what moving it somewhere sturdier would involve.