What Your Spreadsheets Don’t Tell You

You have all this perfect work order data, so what do you do next? You add all that data to a spreadsheet with the hope that you’ll be able to calculate critical metrics without any errors and that you can make better-informed decisions. However, here is where the problem lies. Using spreadsheets to analyze your work order data not only causes room for human errors and confusion but also, it requires repeated effort.

What’s wrong with spreadsheets?

Simplicity is what we all look for when it comes to managing work order data. That is why most organizations turn to spreadsheets since they are easy to use; it does all the work for you in calculations, forecasting, and graphs. But what we miss out on are the additional factors that come with using spreadsheets. For instance, there is only one person who understands the process behind the data on the maintenance and reliability team since they are the ones who programmed it in the first place. This leads to human error risk as other members cannot cross-check data efficiently and view data sets from other members’ perspectives. Overall, gauging an understanding of why and how decisions were finalized becomes harder since there is no clear documentation of how things were calculated.

Additionally, spreadsheet data is easily lost or corrupted. After all, it’s a mere document that contains all your work order data and it often gets emailed around. Moreover, spreadsheets do not give you the flexibility to analyze large volumes of historical work order data efficiently.

​It’s time to make the switch 

Work orders are complex in nature and require systems that can keep up with the ever-changing nature of work order data. If you’re interested in finding a solution for analyzing your work orders that provides you with more features than a simple spreadsheet, click on one of our resources below, or book a demo with us to see how NRX’s Work Order Analysis solution can help make your work orders work for you.