Why is a database better than Excel?
For a lot of businesses, you track everything in Excel. And it does a pretty good job. However, you might be stretching the limits of what it can do now. If you’re beginning to wonder, ‘Why is a database better than Excel?’ we’re here to illuminate the benefits of getting something custom-built.
What is a database?
But first, we need to explain what a database actually is. According to Airtable, “A database is a collection of data that is organised so the information within can be easily accessed later. […] Databases power everything from banking software to scientific research to government records, as well as the websites you use every day, like Amazon, YouTube, Netflix, and Wikipedia.” It’s perfect for storing, managing and querying large or complex datasets. In comparison, a spreadsheet is more about doing calculations, basic visualisations and data entry.
Why is a database better than Excel?
There are quite many reasons why you might want to move your business data over to a proper database. Here are just a few:
Relationships
Baserow explains, “Excel allows you to create relationships between datasets using its Power Pivot feature. When you import related tables from a relational database, Excel can often create those relationships within a data model. But for all other cases, you will need to explicitly create relationships manually. What’s more, Excel can only create the relationship if one column contains unique values. While Excel has some features for creating basic relationships between two tables, it’s not designed for creating complex ones.”
Volume
If you have more data than you can work with on a single spreadsheet or the program starts to crawl when processing; it might be time for a custom database. The built-in tools in Excel just aren’t made to visualise big data and collaboration can be cumbersome. Plus, looking through your data is often a manual task and that’s not very efficient. A database is better if you need reliable, real-time and simple access to your data.
Audits
When track changes just won’t cut it, then you will need to move to a database. In Excel, once changes are accepted, the log no longer retains them. So you’ll have no long-term record. For many businesses, that’s just not secure enough. A database would allow you to track specific team or user actions, logins, deletions, overwrites and edits to tables and fields. This would also provide the option for admins to roll back any changes if required.
Web applications
If you’re going to make web apps from your data then a database is the better option. This provides the right foundation and data structure for booking systems, internal searches, customer portals and the like. It’s also less hassle than trying to integrate external tools with Excel to enable the same.
Ready to say goodbye to Excel? Talk to us about your data landscape and goals. We’ll help you create a scope and timeline for building your database and can even advise on complementary web app functionality.
