For more than a decade, organisations have invested heavily in digital transformation, chasing efficiency, security and better insight. Yet despite the scale of spending, many programmes fail to deliver meaningful change.
Leadership, culture and skills gaps are often blamed – and in some cases, that is the root cause. However, there is a more fundamental issue that repeatedly undermines transformation efforts: trying to modernise on top of tools that were never designed to scale.
Excel is one of the most common – and most overlooked – examples. Spreadsheets remain deeply embedded in critical business processes. So much so that 90% of firms still rely on spreadsheets for their financial operations, that is according to AutoRek's 2025 annual payments survey at least.
While Excel is a powerful analytical tool, it was designed for individual productivity, not as organisational infrastructure. When firms treat it as such, it becomes a significant blocker for efficient cloud, AI and automation adoption, regardless of how ambitious the transformation strategy may appear on paper.
If businesses want to unlock AI-driven productivity and better decision-making, they must move away from using Excel at the core of their operations or risk continuing to build on fragile foundations.
Why Excel becomes a structural blocker at scale
The problem is not that Excel is bad, it’s just that it lacks the architectural foundations required for modern digital operations.
At scale, spreadsheets tend to fragment across folders, inboxes and teams. As usage grows, versions multiply, ownership becomes unclear and organisations lose any single, trusted view of their data. Instead of enabling insight, spreadsheets often entrench silos – quite the opposite of what digital transformation is meant to achieve.
Automation doesn’t solve this problem. In fact, it often makes it worse. Automated systems depend on consistent data structures, clear ownership, reliable lineage and strong governance – none of which spreadsheets provide by default.
Even when automation is successful, it’s typically owned and maintained by a handful of people. When those people leave or processes change, maintenance becomes difficult causing it to become less effective or fail entirely.
When spreadsheet risk becomes real
Beyond operational inefficiency, the governance and security implications of spreadsheet-based workflows are often underestimated – that is, until something goes wrong.
A stark example came in 2021, when the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) suffered a serious data breach involving a spreadsheet containing the personal information of around 250 Afghan nationals who had applied for relocation to the UK. The file was mistakenly emailed outside the intended distribution list. With no granular access controls or encryption in place, copies were quickly forwarded, creating multiple uncontrolled versions of sensitive data.
Because the spreadsheet lacked audit trails and centralised governance, the MoD was unable to quickly contain or retract the exposure. The Information Commissioner’s Office later fined the department £350,000 for failing to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data.
While this may sound like an extreme case, it highlights a broader truth: spreadsheet-based processes introduce governance and security risks that are difficult to manage once they become embedded at scale. As organisations grow, so too does their exposure.
What successful digital transformation actually requires
If Excel-driven workflows represent fragile foundations, successful digital transformation requires a far more holistic approach. It’s not about endlessly layering new tools on top of outdated platforms and legacy systems. It’s about making deliberate decisions to retire technologies that no longer scale, and replacing them with systems designed for enterprise-wide governance, integration and evolution.
Take Sovini Group for example, a property management company specialising in affordable and social housing, property development, construction and community services across the UK. Having heavily relied on spreadsheets across its businesses, teams were working inconsistently, resulting in siloed data and duplicated admin efforts. Tasks that should have been straightforward were repeated three times over, creating an unnecessary drag on productivity. With employees working across the entire UK, it was vital that everyone could work from a single centralised system.
By moving away from spreadsheet-driven processes and implementing Microsoft Business Central and Kick Housing Finance (a finance and enterprise resource planning software tool designed specifically for housing organisations), Sovini consolidated its systems and introduced a more consistent, governed way of working.
Admin efforts that previously took around 45 minutes have been reduced to just two minutes. Once the solution has been rolled out across the entire group, it’s anticipated that four hours of admin time will be saved. More importantly, the change freed up time for teams to focus on higher-value work. That shift delivered a 95.5% reduction in time spent on administrative tasks, proving that meaningful transformation doesn’t have to be complex.
But transformation shouldn’t be treated as a one-off project. It’s an ongoing journey and the organisations that embed continuous improvement into their digital strategy will be better equipped to adopt emerging technologies without repeating the mistakes of the past.
The bottom line
Digital transformation is not a trend or a technology upgrade, it’s a fundamental shift in how organisations operate, make decisions and deliver value. When transformation fails, it’s not because organisations lack ambition, it’s because they underestimate the cost of building on unstable foundations.
As long as spreadsheet-driven processes function as invisible infrastructure, investment in AI, automation and advanced platforms will continue to underdeliver. Organisations that want to benefit from the next wave of innovation must first confront the foundations they are building on. Those that do will be far better positioned to adapt as change accelerates and those that do not will continue to see the same disappointment.