Fintech and Future of MS Excel
With Over 750 million users world wide, Excel sustains for more than 30 years, But in future, can it sustain midst of Artificial intelligence craze? Can it ladder up towards the world that is filled with huge amounts of data that needs to be cleaned and analyzed. As I was learning Microsoft Excel Advanced, I had this doubt, after a good amount of research here is what I got to know. Keep reading.
We simply are used to MS Excel. It’s no alien thing, However as someone who builds a career, would you rather spend time learning Excel or Python (R/MATLAB/etc). Excel is free in most cases, Easily accessible and more than that secure. And even to do some evergreen analysis like financial modelling, HR data management and so on we depend solely on Excel. Microsoft does take steps to upgrade and stay up to date. MS Excel can connect to web pages, ERP systems and various cloud BI tools, like Salesforce, and is continuing to develop the compatibility with most big data analytic companies. It recently got announced as a Turing Complete.
Excel has many other capabilities, including a large number of sophisticated mathematical, statistical and logical functions, extensive data analysis, deep access to external data sources, visualization (charts etc.), prediction, current generation AI, integration with other applications and the potential to integrate with corporate applications and cloud services. But what? Even Though MS Excel is under risk of losing a bad number of users.
Now almost of all software’s and programming languages have break down excel functions for that specific use. For example for a statistical analysis You can use R which is better and easier than excel. With manual data entry the process makes slower for big companies, And with Big Data revolution, Its not possible to depend on MS excel.
Alternatives to MS excel for Business.
Google sheets are easily accessible, Simpler than excel to use, Easy to save and do collaborative works. Easy to share and editable in real time. This takes away users who use excel for storing simple data’s, who run small business, I commonly saw it being used to save data lists during college events, to assign tasks to small set of people. You can save it in drive and access whenever wherever needed. Nowadays Cloud based tools are much needed. As a Google users you need not bother opening a separate account, saving and storing your spreadsheet securely.
Python– With data revolution and more people learning programming languages, It becomes fairly easier to use and get necessary data instantly and more than that perform rigorous task as well. One would choose to learn python over excel as it is largely applicable and has huge potential for further development. Its a open source free to use software, With Forums to help when needed. Your Code is not working? Need not worry you got stack overflow etc.
Zoho Sheets– when you buy Zoho business tools as a package, Its easier to use Zoho sheets for not so hard data analysis. And for your business as a whole.
Tableau: Although its close alternative to powerBI. It is also a alternate to excel in terms of data visualisation and routine business data analysis.
There are plenty of alternatives Here I mentioned some important and most used tools.
What Microsoft is doing?
AZURE ML excel add-on
Machine learning is becoming Most needed skill to learn and its applications are numerous. Many business are updating them with Adaptation of machine learning in their day to day activities. But its hard to learn, It requires computational skills, Solid knowledge on mathematics, statistics and programming language.
Microsoft provide an AML add-in for Excel that allows you to use web services. You need to know URL and API key for the service to connect to it though. Azure Machine Learning is a cloud service for accelerating and managing the machine learning project lifecycle. Azure ML Deep integration with Microsoft services like Excel can be done.
With Azure ML add-on in Excel easier Machine learning models like Regression line, k-means clustering, k-nearest neighbour, naïve Bayes classification, and decision trees can be built. It requires basic understanding on Machine learning and Excel. It is compatible for analysis of small sets of data and visualisation.
Add custom functions through JavaScript
For Long time VBA(Visual Basic for Application) is being used to create custom functions. Custom functions enable developers to add new functions to Excel by defining those functions in JavaScript as part of an add-in. Users within Excel can access custom functions just as they would any native function in Excel. Custom functions made through VBA are not portable to Excel Online and Excel for iOS due to the missing VBA capability on these platforms. Therefore, Microsoft has improved the JavaScript API that was already being used for Office add-in development to allow developers to create custom functions attached to the add-ins.
Excel to fintech app
Excel teamed up with plaid in building a Fintech app called “Money”. Plaid is a technology platform, enables applications to connect with users’ bank accounts. Plaid, the company connected users’ bank accounts, with this Excel becomes more useful with a new integration that accesses live consumer bank and spending data. It becomes easier to track and manage bank account in real time. And helps manage personal finance effectively
Lambda Function
With addition of Lambda function Excel transformed into a full-fledged programming language thus implies user can perform any computation with excel lambda.
Lambda function is a new Excel feature that lets users define and name custom formula functions that behave like standard Excel functions
To End , Excel can be an adequate system to store static data and basic analysis, but it is not made for the in-depth analysis that most organizations require in coming future.