For many organizations, Excel is the natural starting point for planning. It's accessible, flexible and easy to get started with. When planning processes are still evolving, Excel gives teams the freedom to experiment, build and adapt their way of working. In the early stages, that's often exactly what organizations need.
So, the question is not whether Excel is good or bad. The real question is: at what point does it stop being sufficient? That tipping point tends to arrive earlier than most companies expect.
In our recent webinar, we asked participants where they currently stand in their planning journey. The results showed that most organizations still rely primarily on Excel, while only a small minority have already transitioned to an APS-driven planning environment.
In many organizations, Excel doesn’t suddenly fail. It gradually becomes increasingly difficult to maintain. What starts as a handful of spreadsheets often evolves into what we sometimes call a forest of Excels. Individual files created over time to solve local challenges, each containing its own logic, assumptions and manual workarounds.
Over time, that flexibility becomes increasingly difficult to manage. Logic becomes harder to follow. Ownership becomes unclear. The challenge is not the spreadsheets themselves. The challenge is that nobody sees the full forest anymore.
During the webinar, The Planning Maturity Trap: When Excel Starts Limiting Growth, we asked participants about the challenges they experience in their current planning setup. The responses painted a remarkably consistent picture. Rather than spending time improving plans, many teams spend a significant part of their effort aligning data, reconciling spreadsheets and validating numbers before any real decision-making can begin.
Participants identified manual errors, fragmented data across regions, limited visibility and the effort required to consolidate information as their biggest day-to-day frustrations. Many also indicated that scenario analysis remains difficult to perform in Excel, while connecting operational plans with financial plans continues to be a major challenge.
Ultimately, the biggest cost is not the spreadsheets themselves, but the conversations they create. Planning meetings increasingly become discussions about whose numbers are correct instead of what actions the business should take. At that point, the tool is no longer supporting the planning process, it is driving the inefficiency.
Organizations rarely wake up one day and decide to move away from Excel. It is typically a gradual realization, triggered by recurring frustrations.
You start noticing that scenario analysis becomes too complex to run. Adjustments require manual effort across multiple files. Scaling to new products, sites, or markets feels heavier each time. And often, a few key individuals become indispensable because they are the only ones who truly understand how the files work.
Individually, these issues can still be managed. Together, they create a system that is difficult to sustain. What we often observe is that the complexity of the business starts growing faster than the capability of the tool. And that is where Excel reaches its limits.
Many organizations also pointed to structural limitations: too many versions of the truth, lack of integration with ERP systems, and heavy dependence on individual users. These are not isolated issues but systemic signals that the planning setup is no longer sustainable.
One of the most common misconceptions is that moving beyond Excel is primarily a technology discussion. In reality, planning maturity is a much stronger predictor of success.
Some organizations operate with a highly standardized planning process, clear governance and a shared data foundation. Others still rely on a collection of spreadsheets maintained by individual planners with limited alignment across functions.
The roadmap will look very different for each of them.
That's why there is no universal path from Excel to APS.
The right next step depends on where your organization stands today in terms of process maturity, governance and standardization.
What was interesting in the discussion is that most companies already have a clear idea of where they want to go. While current setups are still largely Excel-driven, the majority of participants indicated their target state lies in integrated planning environments supported by APS, often with advanced scenario capabilities.
They want a more integrated way of working, where different stakeholders operate from the same plan. They want to make decisions with a full view on service, cost, and cash, instead of optimizing in silos. And increasingly, they expect planning to do more than support operations, and they expect it to enable growth.
What many organizations are really looking for is not a better spreadsheet. They are looking for a way to create one plan across stakeholders, connect operational and financial objectives and make decisions with a clear view on business outcomes.
That ambition is rarely the problem.
The challenge lies in translating it into a concrete next step.
A common misconception is to treat the transition to an advanced planning system as a straightforward tooling upgrade. In reality, it is much broader than that. Introducing an APS forces you to make explicit choices: how planning should work, how decisions are made, and how different parts of the organization connect.
It touches on four dimensions that need to evolve together: process, data, technology and change. There is of course the tool itself, but equally important is the data behind it. Without a solid and well-governed data foundation, no system will deliver the expected value. At the same time, processes need to be defined and aligned. Simply transferring existing Excel logic into a new environment rarely works.
And finally, there is the human aspect. People need to understand why things are changing, what is expected from them, and how they fit into the future setup. That is often where success or failure is decided.
What we try to emphasize in these conversations is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach.
Some organizations have already invested heavily in process maturity and data standardization. For them, the transition can happen relatively quickly.
Others are still operating with fragmented Excel files and loosely defined processes. In those cases, more groundwork is required but the potential impact is often larger as well.
The key is not to compare yourself to an ideal state, but to understand your current situation and define a realistic path forward from there.
For companies that recognize themselves in this story, the first step is not to select a tool.
It is to create clarity.
Clarity on how planning currently works, where the main pain points are, and what the organization wants to achieve. From there, it becomes possible to build a value case that is grounded in your own data, rather than industry benchmarks.
Making the future tangible also helps. When planners and stakeholders can see how their day-to-day work would look in a different setup, the conversation shifts from abstract to concrete. Only then does it make sense to decide on the right solution and roadmap. This is particularly important as many organizations position themselves in the middle of the planning maturity curve, indicating that while progress has been made, a significant gap remains before advanced planning can deliver full value.
Planning is not an objective in itself. It is a means to deal with increasing complexity and volatility in a structured way.
Excel has played that role for many companies, and in certain contexts, it still does.
But when the environment becomes more dynamic, the limitations become harder to ignore. At that point, the question is no longer whether you can continue with Excel, but whether it still allows you to move forward.
Excel becomes a limitation when business complexity grows faster than spreadsheets can reliably support decision-making, collaboration and scenario planning. Common warning signs include multiple versions of the truth, heavy manual effort, difficulty running scenarios and increasing dependence on key users.
For many organizations, Excel is a practical and effective starting point. Challenges typically emerge when scale, volatility and organizational complexity increase.
Before implementing APS, organizations benefit from establishing clear planning processes, trusted data, defined governance and stakeholder alignment. APS delivers the most value when these foundations are in place.
The strongest APS business cases are built around measurable business outcomes rather than software features. Instead of relying on generic ROI assumptions, they start with company-specific data to quantify improvement opportunities and build a credible investment case.
Want to learn more? Read our blog Planning in Uncertain Times: Why Your APS Business Case Needs to Change to discover why APS business cases are evolving and how to build one that resonates with executive stakeholders.