No, this isn’t some guy who hit on you at a bar.

This is about taking something that was meant for a specific purpose and using it to perform a different task.

Like using a knife as a screwdriver. Or the heel of a shoe for a hammer. Or Excel for everything.

I like Excel. Heck, I love Excel. But it has its place.

There are plenty of agencies and in-house marketing departments out there using Excel for everything from Job Forms and Briefs to Schedules, Budgets, and Reports. This creates a lot of redundancy – and therefore, a lot of data-entry.

That’s fine if you have a couple clients and a few jobs. But it’s a nightmare with dozens of clients and hundreds of jobs.

Worse yet, everyone is using their own version of forms that you originally created - with a lot of time and consideration - for the purpose of consistency.

Yet many agencies still turn to Excel for most, if not all, of their daily agency management.

Imagine a solution where you – and your team – input data that’s relevant to what they do every day (all that stuff you have to track and measure – like timesheets), and it’s all gathered in one place.

Reports gather all that data in one place, and you can search or slice-it-n-dice-it any way you want.

There is software out there that does exactly that. If you need some help researching solutions, I can be of assistance.

If you truly feel that Excel (or any office / Google Docs / cloudware program) is the solution, I can help you build a better process.

No matter how simple or complex the solution you choose, you need structure (that means process), a little bit of training, and compliance to make it really work for you.

Oh, and that guy at the bar. He is inappropriate.