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413 points martinald | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.198s | source
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debo_ ◴[] No.46196982[source]
> I'm sure every organisation has hundreds if not thousands of Excel sheets tracking important business processes that would be far better off as a SaaS app.

Far better off for who? People constantly dismiss spreadsheets, but in many cases, they are more powerful, more easily used by the people who have the domain knowledge required to properly implement calculations or workflow, and are more or less universally accessible.

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robotresearcher ◴[] No.46197107[source]
Spreadsheets are an incredible tool. They were a key innovation in the history of applications. I love them and use them.

But it's very hard to have a large conventional cell-formula spreadsheet that is correct. The programming model / UI are closely coupled, so it's hard to see what's going on once your sheet is above some fairly low complexity. And many workplaces have monstrous sheets that run important things, curated lovingly (?) for many years. I bet many or most of them have significant errors.

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1. MrDresden ◴[] No.46202299[source]
This happened not so many years ago, in a certain small European nation, where official government housing valuation numbers were incorrect for some years due to a flaw in a spreadsheet.

I remember my apartment got a ~10% bump in value one year due to this flaw being fixed (fix didn't apply to all housing, just those who were on floors 5 or above).

I don't think though that a SaaS would have solved anything here.