Editorial
For years, software vendors and Chief Data Officers have waged a quiet war on spreadsheets. The rationale has been sound: spreadsheets are notoriously error-prone, encourage multiple versions of the truth and can undermine data governance. Left unchecked, their unconstrained growth risks diluting investment in more scalable, governed business intelligence and analytics platforms — especially as AI-driven insights and self-service business intelligence (BI) become central tools for enterprise decision-making.
Yet reality has stubbornly refused to cooperate. “Despite years of effort to rein them in, spreadsheets are more prevalent than ever," noted Howard Dresner, CRO at Dresner Advisory Services. "In fact, 56% of organizations in our research view spreadsheets as highly valuable, with a growing majority considering them strategic.”
Usage is equally telling: in our most recent report on spreadsheets, 38% of organizations report that everyone uses spreadsheets, and when combined with those where most employees rely on them, adoption exceeds 80%.
Far from fading away, spreadsheets remain deeply embedded in how organizations work — creating a persistent, if uncomfortable, truth for data leaders to confront.
Table of Contents
The Contrary Is Fact
Conventional wisdom says that as organizations deploy more BI tools, improve data literacy and invest in AI, spreadsheet use should naturally decline. The data says otherwise.
Perceptions of the value of spreadsheets do not diminish as BI capabilities expand; in fact, spreadsheet use often increases. Even as BI penetration deepens and AI becomes more pervasive, organizations do not expect spreadsheets to fade into the background. What appears intuitive — that better tools would displace simpler ones — turns out to be wrong.
The pattern is consistent across maturity levels. Organizations with extremely high data literacy still report pervasive spreadsheet use: in 2025, 54% say everyone uses spreadsheets and another 27% say most do.
When BI penetration reaches 61% or more, a majority of organizations report universal spreadsheet use. The same dynamic holds for data science and machine learning. Spreadsheets are more prevalent when data science and machine learning (DSML) is being evaluated, piloted or run in production than in organizations with no DSML activity at all.
Related Article: The Quiet Growth Engine: How Modern Data & AI Governance Unlocks Value Potential
The AI-Spreadsheet Paradox
AI amazingly amplifies the trend.
Among organizations that view AI as central to their strategy, 62% report that everyone uses spreadsheets. Nearly 90% of organizations with generative AI in production say everyone or most employees rely on them. The relationship becomes even more pronounced with agentic AI: in 2025, 71% of organizations running agentic AI in production indicate universal spreadsheet use — more than double the rate seen in early-stage adopters.
The research makes the conclusion unavoidable: higher BI penetration, more analytic tools and advanced ai initiatives correlate with greater, not lesser, spreadsheet use.
What looks paradoxical is actually logical. As tools proliferate, so does the need to normalize, exchange and socialize data and analytic outputs across teams, systems and workflows. Spreadsheets excel at this connective role, providing a shared, familiar medium that acts as a common language for data.
For data leaders, the implication is not to eradicate spreadsheets, nor to treat them as a necessary evil. Their persistence reflects real organizational needs:
- Fast, flexible handling of simpler tasks
- Broad accessibility for users with varying levels of data literacy
- An easy way to share and align on insights.
The challenge is not stopping spreadsheet use, but governing it intelligently — recognizing that in a world of expanding BI and AI, spreadsheets are often the glue that holds insight-sharing together.
Recommendations for Data Leaders
Data Leaders should aim to target and control spreadsheet use — a pragmatic middle ground between denial and dependency. Spreadsheets should be encouraged as connective tissue — bridging gaps across an increasingly complex landscape of BI tools and AI solutions — while being deliberately constrained to a supporting role.
The objective is not elimination, but containment: ensuring spreadsheets accelerate understanding and sharing without undermining adoption of governed BI platforms or AI-driven analytics.
When spreadsheet use moves beyond simple analysis or translation and becomes mission-critical to strategic business outcomes, it is a clear signal to migrate that use case into a production-grade analytical system. Doing so ensures proper data lineage, governance, scalability and risk management — capabilities spreadsheets were never designed to provide. Left unchecked, critical spreadsheet workflows quietly become fragile systems of record.
Assess Current Spreadsheet Use
The starting point for data leaders should be to assess where spreadsheets are heavily used, by whom and for what purpose. Classify use cases by value and strategic alignment — distinguishing between legitimate bridging and sharing needs, appropriate lightweight analytics, skills or literacy gaps and outright avoidance of BI tools.
Recognize that spreadsheets are often the default because they are cheaper and faster than training and tooling — but that short-term efficiency can create long-term risk.
Create a Mindset Shift
Overtime data leaders should aim to create a mindset shift. Spreadsheets should no longer be treated as a universal “Swiss army knife,” but as a transitional or complementary tool alongside more advanced analytical solutions.
Here data leaders should identify mission-critical spreadsheet processes, reverse-engineer them to capture metadata and lineage and prioritize their migration where BI or AI platforms can deliver higher value with lower risk. At the same time, invest in targeted training and data literacy to reduce users’ reflexive reliance on spreadsheets.
Set Guardrails and Measure Progress
Finally, data leaders should put guardrails in place and measure progress. Track where spreadsheet use is declining in favor of higher-value tools — and where it is intentionally used as a bridge to improve sharing and collaboration.
Dresner recommended embedding guidance on spreadsheet risks and proper use into data training programs. "With clear boundaries, focused investments and measurable outcomes, spreadsheets can play a productive supporting role without slowing the organization’s broader BI and AI ambitions.”
Related Article: Why Bad Data Is Blocking AI Success — and How to Fix It
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Parting Words
The enduring lesson for data leaders is clear: spreadsheets are neither the enemy nor the answer — they are a signal. Their persistence reflects real needs for speed, accessibility and shared understanding in increasingly complex data and AI ecosystems.
The winning strategy is not to wage war on spreadsheets, but to put them in their place: enable them where they add value, constrain them where they add risk and deliberately graduate critical use cases into governed, scalable platforms. In doing so, data leaders can turn spreadsheets from an unmanaged liability into a purposeful bridge that accelerates, rather than impedes, BI and AI maturity.
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