In my industry Excel is used by 99%. In the last 40 yrs the industry hasn’t embraced technology well. Mountains of emails are exchanged sending information on Excel. Many within the industry have seen their role become more about trying to manage the overwhelming volume of information and becoming “data input clerks”.

I’m considering;

1. Using Excel for front end to

   1. Capture data

   2. Read data

2. MS Azure to store the data

The reason I want to use Excel is;

1. It’s on everyone’s pc – reducing cost burden to develop

2. The use of the internet is not always available in my industry. So front end form filling isn’t always guaranteed if it relies on good strong connections. There’ nothing worse than “hanging” systems which just burn up already [limited] user time.

3. I suspect it will reduce costs as handling local data on laptops and saving the variable data to Azure reduces the storage space used. Data can be transferred to Azure at the end of the day?

4. It will allow different forms or “apps” to be created and installed on phones and laptops and when necessary updated without having to redistribute data amongst users.

My question is does the above “have legs” or am I totally missing something?

Thank you

I’ve Not started yet. I’m trying to make sure I’m looking down the right road and not into a cul-de-sac.