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Have you ever wondered why our tagline is “It’s time to ditch the spreadsheets”? Explore the examples of “excel disasters” below, and the reason will quickly become clear…
Since their introduction in 1985, spreadsheets have found their way into every corner of business operations. From small calculations to managing massive datasets, Excel became the go-to tool thanks to its ease of use and computational power. But as a famous Dutch footballer (Johan Cruijff) once said, “Every advantage has its disadvantage.”
While Excel remains useful for simple tasks, it has long outlived its place in critical business processes. Relying on spreadsheets for large-scale calculations or regulatory reporting exposes you to avoidable risks – mistakes that can cost millions. Let’s look at 8 real-world Excel errors that show why it’s time to ditch the spreadsheets.
One too many zeros. That’s all it took for Kodak to accidentally overpay severance packages by $11 million. A small typo, overlooked in a spreadsheet, became a multi-million-dollar problem.
In a high-stakes acquisition, Barclays Capital mistakenly included 179 unwanted contracts. Why? Rows in Excel were hidden instead of deleted, leading to serious financial and legal consequences.
Even intelligence agencies aren’t immune. A formatting error in a spreadsheet caused MI5 to change the last three digits of phone numbers to 000, leading them to bug the wrong phones. A minor glitch with significant ramifications.
A simple typo caused the London Olympics to oversell 10,000 tickets for an event. An employee accidentally typed 20,000 instead of 10,000 – a costly, embarrassing mistake.
Hidden rows, sheets, or cells might look safe, but they’re not. AstraZeneca accidentally released confidential information because hidden cells were mistakenly unhidden.
In 2012, JP Morgan’s trading desk lost $6 billion due to a copy-paste error in Excel. One of the world’s biggest banks was brought down by one small human mistake in a spreadsheet.
TransAlta misaligned rows in a spreadsheet, leading to bids for low-demand routes being priced too high. The result? A loss of 10% of annual profits – all because of a simple copy-paste mistake.
Whether it’s typos, formatting issues, or accidental data leaks, spreadsheets are fragile. Errors happen more easily than you think, and for regulated industries like finance, they can be disastrous.
These examples show a clear pattern: relying on spreadsheets for complex processes exposes you to significant financial, operational, and reputational risks. Modern businesses demand accuracy, scalability, and security – areas where Excel simply can’t keep up.
At RiskConcile, we’ve replaced these outdated workflows with streamlined, cloud-based solutions for various Risk and Regulatory use cases. Our platform automates complex calculations and reporting, eliminating manual errors and ensuring consistent, accurate results. Built-in checks detect anomalies before they become problems, while workflows adapt to your existing data and processes.