The experience of using a spreadsheet for managing a marketing budget can range from simplistic to nightmarish. Read on to find out the 5 problems with managing budgets on a spreadsheet.
Condensed...
There are five primary problems with using spreadsheets.
1) Spreadsheet data can be erroneous when entered or changed.
2) Spreadsheet consolidations and aggregations are not for the weak of heart.
3) Spreadsheets are not scalable. I have seen marketing budgets that encompass hundreds of marketing programs, multiple lines of business or geographies across multiple product lines. If you are tracking and rolling up all marketing spend transactions, you can easily get into tens of thousands of lines of spreadsheet rows making reporting and consolidations slow and difficult.
4) Spreadsheets are in reality not that flexible. Using the same scenario cited in the consolidations and scalability examples described above, imagine the impact of a decision to add a column, track a new element, add a new category of spending or a new line of business.
5) Spreadsheets are problematic to inspect and audit. We’ve all seen it. Your spreadsheet doesn’t cross foot or total up to what’s in the submitted budget or spending report. Consider a budget that was fine on Monday but is now not footing on Tuesday. Who changed it and where was the change made. What’s your audit trail?
Outstanding!!
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