The proliferation of low-code / no-code platforms has opened new doors for companies to “digitally transform” their processes. As well as improving efficiencies for professional developers, these platforms are also enabling a fundamental shift in terms of who can build and publish apps. Business users whose primary role is NOT application development – so-called “citizen developers” – can now build and deploy custom, fit-for-purpose apps to end-users using one of the many no-code / low-code offerings.
But going back a decade or two, well before the current generation of low-code offerings emerged, the citizen developers of the time were already encapsulating their knowledge and expertise to share with other users. How did they do it, “pre-Low-Code”? Why, they used Microsoft Excel, of course!
SourceForge recently caught up with Dr. Sebastian Dewhurst, Director of Business Development at EASA, to talk about the obstacles encountered by companies when their latest digital transformation initiative comes face to face with business processes that are underpinned by spreadsheets. Dewhurst also offers some advice to help enterprises prevent and reduce the risk of “Excel chaos”, without giving up the valuable intellectual property that companies have embedded in spreadsheets over the years. Finally, we consider how companies can leverage the ubiquitous knowledge of Excel to fast-track their digital transformation efforts.
Q: First and foremost, can you please share with us a brief overview of your company? When and how was EASA established?
Director of Business Development at EASA
A: EASA originated in the early 2000s within AEA Technology (now part of Ricardo PLC). The original vision was to create a new way for companies to deploy engineering and scientific models as intuitive web apps. A fundamental requirement was that these web apps could be built without any knowledge of conventional coding, and with a fraction of the effort. In short, EASA was designed from the outset to be a low-code application development platform for engineers and scientists.
The initiative was driven by frequent requests from customers for applications that would allow users to easily and safely run models and calculational tools that had been created by subject-matter-experts. In other words, they wanted to “democratize” their existing tools, ranging from commercial software like MATLAB, to Python and R – and of course, Excel.
Now, we engineers don’t like to admit it, but Excel is quite possibly the most widely used engineering software in the world. So here at EASA, driven as always by customer demand, we started to place particular emphasis on the “appification” of Excel.
As a result, EASA is now the leader in helping companies across all industries transform existing workflows which depend on Excel into scalable, collaborative, enterprise-grade web apps.
Q: What industries do you serve and who are your current customers?
A: While EASA started out serving primarily engineers and scientists in the manufacturing sector, the ubiquitous nature of spreadsheets means that today we serve customers in almost every sector.
Our better-known customers include AIG, Bayer, Boston Consulting Group, Blue Origin, Borg Warner, Caterpillar, Corning, Eli Lilly, General Electric, HP, HPE, Ingersoll Rand, KPMG, Pfizer, Schneider Electric, Procter and Gamble, VOYA, and Zürich Financial.
Q: Why does Excel continue to remain digital transformation’s biggest competitor?
A: Let me answer that anecdotally. Earlier this year, we were approached by a well-known insurance company who wanted to modernize, or “digitally transform” a critical process which was based on a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was not the most complex we have ever seen, but neither was it trivial. It included a lot of business knowledge in the form of logic and formulae, as well as a fair amount of VB.
We indicated it was a good candidate to be “appified” and deployed as a secure web app using EASA, but before we were able to progress, the CTO got involved, pointing out that they had already invested in a low-code platform. The preference, naturally enough, was to use technology they already had.
We did not hear from them for a couple of months. When we did, they revealed that it had taken two months just to get an estimate to extract all the business logic in the spreadsheet and rebuild it into a web app using their low-code platform. The estimate was $2 million and 2 years!
We refer to this kind of use-case as being in the “low-code no-go-zone”. While the modern low-code tools are excellent for building apps that are heavily data-centric, it is not always easy to build apps that incorporate the kind of calculations and business logic that is actually pretty easy to implement in Excel.
So, customers are forced to choose either the agility and flexibility of Excel, or the convenience and security of a low-code platform. With EASA, they no longer have to choose – they can have both.
Coming back to the case I just mentioned, we were able to build an app using their spreadsheet in less than a day. And yes – they are now a customer.
Q: What do you mean by “Excel chaos” and how does EASA help?
A: We’ve discussed how spreadsheets remain one of the most important business tools, thanks to their power and flexibility. However, Excel has severe shortcomings that can cause significant problems. We refer to this as “Excel chaos”, and the symptoms are well-known: lack of version control, lack of security for proprietary business logic and methods, lack of auditability of usage, and dependence on error-prone manual steps such as cutting and pasting. These symptoms have only become more prevalent as remote working has become the new normal.
For an individual employee who creates and uses a spreadsheet for some ad-hoc analysis, this is often manageable simply by applying best practices. But when a “master” spreadsheet underpins an important process, which must be accessible for multiple end-users, then “Excel chaos” is sure to follow.
However, it is possible to continue using Excel without having to deal with the downsides. EASA enables rapid creation of web apps, in a no-code environment, which connect with – and run – existing spreadsheets on a secure server. Compared with traditional desktop usage of Excel, the advantages of this approach include:
- Elimination of version confusion; end-users cannot use the wrong spreadsheet
- Elimination of compatibility issues; end-users don’t need to download the spreadsheet from a network drive, and need only a browser – important in these days of remote working. There is no concern about users’ local version of Excel, or the security settings required to enable VB and macros.
- Enabling mobile access; because EASA web apps are essentially HTML web pages, end-users can open them even on mobile devices.
- Proprietary business logic in the spreadsheet is secured; end-users don’t open the spreadsheet locally and cannot see or expose formulae and logic
- Audit trails are facilitated; logic remains in the spreadsheet, but users’ data is now saved in a database or a CRM system, not to flat files on local hard drives. This makes generating reports of usage, which may be required for compliance, very easy to do. It also enables collaboration.
- Improved process automation and streamlined workflow; additional capabilities not available in Excel can be added, making the app far easier and more efficient to use than the underlying spreadsheet. For example, an EASA app may automate running other software or scripts as well as Excel, for example generating reports in PowerPoint, or sending an email to request management approval or an e-signature.
Q: When would a company use EASA? Can you provide some sample use-cases?
A: Let’s look at two published use-cases, from very different companies (Ingersoll Rand and Zürich Financial), which in fact have a lot in common. In both cases, spreadsheets were being used to generate quotes or pricing estimates. Now, there are many excellent tools for CPQ – configure-price-quote – but for companies that offer highly customizable products or services, it’s hard to beat Excel.
But both companies were experiencing the classic symptoms of Excel chaos. In Zürich’s case, the actuaries who built the pricing models were never comfortable letting underwriters use their native spreadsheet raters for fear of mistakes, unintended edits, and loss of security for the company’s critical IP. Similarly, at Ingersoll Rand – the possibility of a sales engineer misusing a pricing spreadsheet and generating an inaccurate quote was never far away.
Both companies were able to digitally transform the relevant processes using EASA, deploying robust and secure web apps – without discarding the original spreadsheets and starting from scratch with a low-code platform.
But CPQ is by no means the only use-case, because there are so many Excel-based processes out there. Spreadsheets are used for risk analysis, pricing, technical calculations, financial analysis, and so on.
We recently saw Hyde Marine – the leader in ballast water treatment systems for large marine vessels – use EASA to create a highly intuitive application for their clients, dramatically enhancing the customer experience when performing routine diagnostics and performance reports on the actual treatment systems while at sea.
In this case, because the app was designed to be used by customers, there was a requirement to give the app a look and feel far more modern than the original spreadsheet; using EASA’s app builder, Hyde Marine accomplished this with ease. In fact this is a common request from customers who need to securely deploy spreadsheets as web apps to users outside their organization, for example their clients, partners, or agents.
Several case studies can be found here.
Q: Tell us more about EASA. What are its key features and capabilities?
A:. EASA is unique in its ability to publish a spreadsheet as a web app, while retaining the full functionality of Excel including macros, VBA and add-ins.
EASA can be installed on a server-class machine either on premises or in the cloud. The architecture is scalable – the main EASA server can communicate with multiple “Excel Servers”, which run the actual spreadsheets needed by the web apps that have been built and published on the system. In addition, apps built with EASA can be integrated with other systems, such as Salesforce.com, via web service calls. This video provides more details, and shows how you can leverage an easily updatable pricing model in Excel, while providing your CRM users with a seamless pricing and quoting experience – without getting your IT department or consultants involved.
Q: Is EASA used only with existing spreadsheets, or can a customer create a new spreadsheet and deploy it as a web app with EASA?
A: A great question! Historically, we’ve seen customers come to us because they have existing spreadsheets, often complex, often with macros and add-ins. Extracting all this, either manually into a conventional low-code platform, or by using a more automated spreadsheet-conversion technology, is just a non-starter. We provide a viable option for moving forward.
But increasingly, we are seeing a different scenario: the customer has been researching various low-code platforms, and has been put off by the need to learn a whole new way to build apps. In contrast, using EASA, they can leverage the knowledge their employees already have. Building the “engine” for your app in Excel, and then using EASA to deploy it as a web app is far less intimidating.
Let’s not forget – there are over 750 million Excel users out there! Many of them are very capable. Let’s leverage that enormous amount of knowledge.
Q: One final question, but it’s an important one. We have been hearing for many years that Excel is out of date, and will be replaced by newer technology in the near future. How does that affect EASA’s plans?
A: Let’s just say that reports of Excel’s demise have always proved to be greatly exaggerated! But that said, we ARE seeing a trend towards other tools (notably Python and Jupyter, for example) for building models that in the past would have been done in Excel or maybe MATLAB.
The beauty of EASA is – it doesn’t matter!!! We see cases where a customer publishes version 1.0 of an app based on an Excel model, but version 2.0 of the app is published using a machine learning model created with Python. Because of the way EASA decouples the GUI from the underlying calculational method, there is usually very little re-work to do at the app level. You just swap out the engine, and the users may not even see any noticeable changes to the app.
About EASA
EASA is the industry leader in spreadsheet-to-web app technology. Headquartered in Oxford, UK, EASA has offices in Tampa, FL, and Pittsburgh, PA.
EASA was spun off in 2007, and has a United States Patent covering the EASA technology.
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