Excel-as-ERP risk check
How risky is Excel as your operating system?
Answer 8 short questions about your spreadsheets. The check instantly shows a risk score across five dimensions and names your biggest risk driver openly – or tells you honestly that Excel is the right tool for you and there's no need to act.
The Excel-as-ERP risk check assesses how risky it is to run operational core processes (orders, inventory, quotes, customer data) on grown Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheets – across five risk dimensions, honestly rather than alarmingly.
Your spreadsheet landscape
Your result
Risk score
36/100
Growing risk – watch it and replace deliberately
Some areas are becoming a risk. Nothing is acute yet, but the dependency on fragile spreadsheets is growing. It's worth addressing the biggest risk driver (below) deliberately before it turns into an expensive problem.
Risk by dimension
Longer bar = higher risk.
Biggest risk driver: Usage & scalability
Your biggest risk driver is that Excel is no longer a tool but a system for core processes – it wasn't built for that. This is exactly the case where a custom application that maps your processes cleanly pays off.
Most solid: Data integrity
How reliable the values are – or how easily errors creep in unnoticed.
Want to know how a custom application can replace your Excel landscape?
Excel isn't the problem
Excel is an excellent tool – for reporting, analysis and quick prototypes. It only becomes risky when it turns into the central system for operational core processes with multiple users, something it was never built for. This check measures exactly that boundary, not Excel itself.
How this check assesses
- Five risk dimensions: data integrity, collaboration & versions, key-person risk, usage & scalability, and security & traceability.
- Each answer contributes risk points (from harmless to clearly risky). The overall score is the equally weighted mean of the five dimensions – a high value means high risk.
- The dimension with the highest risk is named openly as your biggest risk driver, instead of blurring it into an overall verdict.
- Honest rather than alarming: if you mainly use Excel for analysis, the check says so openly and doesn't push an unnecessary switch.
This check provides orientation, not an audit or a quote. Whether and how a switch pays off depends on details of your processes that we clarify in a conversation.
Frequently asked questions about the check
Is Excel bad, then?
Not at all. Excel is an excellent tool for reporting, analysis and quick prototypes – almost everyone uses it for that, rightly so. It only becomes risky when grown spreadsheets turn into the central system for operational core processes with multiple users, something Excel was never built for. That boundary is exactly what the check measures.
When does Excel become a risk?
Rule of thumb: when several people depend on it at once, when errors in the spreadsheets cause real costs, when only one person still understands the structure, or when sensitive data sits in it without rights and history. The more of these apply, the more reliably a custom application carries the processes.
Do I have to enter my data?
No. The assessment runs entirely in your browser, you see the result instantly and without signing up. No inputs are sent to a server or stored.
What do I do with the result?
Use it as orientation. If the check shows a low risk, all is well – Excel fits for you. If it shows a growing or critical risk, you know which area comes first. The next step is to move the affected processes into a custom application – Custom Applications supports that.