Written on 28 October 2020
Test & Trace spreadsheet errors
Last week it was admitted that the COVID 19 Test and trace task force had ‘temporarily mislaid’ some 16,000 test results because ‘they were using an old version of Excel’. And while this obviously made the whole system look like amateur hour on a system that is apparently the key to managing our collective response to the COVID 19 epidemic – I would like to challenge all our company managers to check their systems and make sure that they would be doing better!
- The first mistake they made was to choose to use Excel instead of a properly constructed database. Their excuse was that they were in a hurry and using the tools that were readily to hand helped them deliver at speed. I bet a lot of us have done that and then let the ‘good enough’ solution stay in place for months or even years. This is despite the commonly accepted research that shows that upto 60% of all spreadsheets are ‘wrong’ just because they contain miscast errors, and if there is more than 1 person entering data, then that error rate goes up to a staggering 80%.
- Sometimes people think that the reason they use Excel is because it has some great graphics and analytical tools like Pivot tables. But we all know RIRO – Rubbish In Rubbish Out – so if the base data is not reliable, the pretty picture and detailed analysis will be equally unreliable. On top of that, the PowerBI tool set from Microsoft now enable everybody to manipulate the data within a database just as easily as you can with Excel since it is broadly build around the same tool sets.
- That they should be using out of date versions of the Excel spreadsheet which could not cope with the volume of data they were handling, is actually a little breath-taking given that this project has such high priority that one would assume that penny pinching on basic software would not be required!
Are you sure that your team would not be making similar mistakes with data that is vital to your business?
Is this a sales pitch? Of course it is!
But if you would like us to have a look at how you are handling your data or other parts of the business if we are already working with you, we would be delighted to talk to you about it.
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