Sharepoint was the solution to scale excel but it didn't seem to have been successful as a tool.
I've seen these trends around "Unbundling" Excel:
- Improve UX by specializing UI
- Increase automation with software integration
But given that Excel is acting in the guise of software, doesn't it follow:
1) Running business of Excel has many of the same problems as other software
2) Excel has some key advantages over other software
(By 1), I mean, QA, testing, deployment, etc...)
The article mentions that Excel doesn't need much onboarding. I don't think that's its only advantage. Also, to solve the general software development problems around Excel, one has to match the near-zero onboarding barrier of Excel, otherwise those solutions will get left behind.
Sharepoint had some questionable synchronization corner cases that, in a poorly configured environment, would just lose some people's files. There are plenty of international horror stories where a teammate in Japan checked out a file and forgot to check back in, effectively blocking teammates in Europe and the US from working on the data.
The main advantage of Excel, which leaves us pessimistic on the long-term viability of the niche SaaS solutions, is the "hackability". There's an incredible depth of tooling and market expertise around Excel, from mundane formula structures to macros to addins and COM automation. Thousands of office workers who otherwise have little programming experience are extremely adept at solving problems with Excel.
The SaaS solutions might individually solve different problems, but are not really designed to play nice with each other (nor are they really incentivized to work well together).
That was quite a while ago. My company has been using the O365 for the past two years and it is very reliable, plus you get the full experience and not a half baked Excel such as Google docs(talking about backwards comp, extensions...).
There are plenty of international horror stories where a teammate in Japan checked out a file and forgot to check back in, effectively blocking teammates in Europe and the US from working on the data.
Then don't have people check out files and check them back in. Only programmers like that kind of nonsense! 99% of the time, let people "nominate" a particular copy of the file as authoritative. If something happens to that particular person's copy, let's say their machine gets smashed, then the latest version can be downloaded by their coworker, and an admin can nominate that copy as authoritative. People then go back to the 99% case of just using Excel and saving their file.
The main advantage of Excel, which leaves us pessimistic on the long-term viability of the niche SaaS solutions, is the "hackability". There's an incredible depth of tooling and market expertise around Excel, from mundane formula structures to macros to addins and COM automation. Thousands of office workers who otherwise have little programming experience are extremely adept at solving problems with Excel.
Therefore, a SaaS solution needs to let people do what they've always done, only better. Don't try to make them act like programmers. Don't change their behavior one iota, unless they're getting a payoff of nifty functionality in exchange. As much as possible, just let them act like they've always done.
The SaaS solutions might individually solve different problems, but are not really designed to play nice with each other (nor are they really incentivized to work well together).
One SaaS solution which can solve dataflow and versioning with ultra-low friction could be the one ring to rule them all. All the other SaaS solutions could be built on top of that. The problem is keeping everything super low friction.
I've seen these trends around "Unbundling" Excel:
But given that Excel is acting in the guise of software, doesn't it follow: (By 1), I mean, QA, testing, deployment, etc...)The article mentions that Excel doesn't need much onboarding. I don't think that's its only advantage. Also, to solve the general software development problems around Excel, one has to match the near-zero onboarding barrier of Excel, otherwise those solutions will get left behind.
Does the experience of Sharepoint bear this out?