The Treehouse
Building a treehouse is terribly inefficient.
A treehouse is far inferior to a regular house.
No plumbing
No electricity
Exposed to the elements of rain, wind, snow, and heat.
Only accessible via a ladder
Short life span depending on healthy the trees are.
Much smaller square footage
Why would you ever want to build one?
Because they are awesome.
They are an amazing canvas for a kid's creativity, imagination, and exploration.
Climbing a ladder doesn’t both them. It adds to the fun. The wind, rain, and snow? Part of the adventure.
Does it need to last for 30 years? No. It needs to last through the peak childhood years. 10-12 years max.
Building data analytics in Excel is terribly inefficient.
Excel is far inferior to a database and ETL technology.
Limited automation
Smaller capacity
Difficult to share or collaborate with colleagues
Prone to all sorts of formula errors, typos, and manual configuration mistakes.
Easy to lose, misplace or delete a file by mistake
Why would you ever build analytics there?
Because it’s an amazingly flexible and powerful tool for business users.
With just a bit of training and experience, it becomes a tremendous canvas for creativity, imagination, and exploration.
Do you care that it can’t hold 1TB of data? No. It only needs to hold this month's sales for the department.
Do you care that there is no automation? No. The business team wants the flexibility to adjust it as they see fit.
Prone to errors? Yes, but also very easy for a business user to write some formulas and uncover insights.
Does it need to last for 10 years as an enterprise data store? No. Just this month while we evaluate our sales process.
Do I want to live in a tree house? No way. Give me a home with climate control and indoor plumbing. But do I want a tree house in my backyard? Absolutely.
Do I want to build an enterprise data strategy around Excel? No way. Give me a scalable database, ETL technology, and analytical tools. But do I want Excel at my company? Absolutely.
I’m here
Sawyer
from The Data Shop
