Don't Let Excel Slowness Hold You Back: Our Proven Solution

Most Excel users have encountered slow Excel files in their careers, which is very frustrating.

Not only can slow Excel files lead to crashes and the loss of unsaved work, but they can also have long-term consequences on your productivity.

When files take minutes or even hours to perform basic operations, it's easy to become discouraged and lose focus on the task at hand. The long-term consequence may be a loss of usability. If a file takes minutes or hours to perform operations, the underlying process often becomes uncontrolled, erratic and potentially dangerous.

Let's dive deeper into the options for making slow Excel files faster.

Depending on the architecture and complexity of the files, there are various approaches you can take to optimise their performance. It is crucial to evaluate your case to find the most effective approach to your individual case.

Understanding the Causes of Excel and VBA Macro Slowness

It all comes down to the files' architecture and efficiency, as well as the amount of data and complexity of the operations being performed. In simple terms:

• Most simple files shouldn't take longer than 0.3 seconds to load. If it's a table with 500 records representing your customer leads or project steps and all the calculations are simple, there is probably some hidden defect that makes it slow.

• On the contrary - a detailed cost analysis with 300 000 cost line items with complex conditional formatting and multiple summaries with nested lookups and sumifs may take longer to load, but the file can probably be redesigned and optimised.

Option 1: Efficient architecture, reasonable complexity - minor defect

If the files are efficiently designed, and their speed of loading (or refreshing or executing macros) is longer than reasonably expected, the chances are there might be some minor defect to blame.

A single line of VBA code can lead o redundant loops, a circular reference, or too frequent refreshing, just to name a few potential causes. The options are almost infinite here, but it is a good place to be compared to other options. A few hours (or days) of audit should lead to a resolution.

Option 2: Inefficient architecture, reasonable complexity

If the business challenge doesn’t require a massive amount of data to churn (usually millions of cells) or very intensive calculations (e.g. heavy-duty solver use, million cells with nested formulae & cascade lookup references), there is no reason for them to be too long.

Here, the solution is to change the paradigm. Usually, to deploy VBA macros more efficiently. A great example is performing some operations behind the scenes instead of the Excel grid. That involves less processing power in moving all the information back and forth between cells. But again, it can be anything - user forms, unreasonably complex formulae, inefficient functionalities used. It’s still not that bad because the template can usually be repurposed and may not need to be done entirely from scratch.

Option 3: Efficient architecture, high complexity - still slow system

A system designed by skilled developers and computationally efficient yet still slow. It can load minutes, not hours, but having 20 users on coffee breaks every hour is not the best.

That’s the toughest place to be, yet not helpless. First, there might still be ways to speed it up; they may just be less obvious. In this quadrant, there might be the need to deploy some advanced diagnostics and look into different directions to bring down those 3 minutes to load to reasonable 20 seconds.

Quite often, those are process-related changes. Maybe processing data in small batches decreases loading time exponentially? Or perhaps some things can be done leaner than initially assumed because we can constrain or cap them based on historical data?

Here, getting someone skilled in process improvement comes in handy. We’ve seen all possible business cases - easy wins, tougher wins and things not worth the effort. Realising the cost/benefit ratio early and focusing on a holistic, process-driven view is crucial.

Option 4: Inefficient architecture, high complexity

Here the diagnosis is straightforward. The challenge outgrew the expectation, and expert help is needed. It's essential to avoid assumptions about the issue's complexity, and an initial diagnosis is crucial to inform actions. However, no challenge can be overcome with the right experts on board.

Tackling Excel Slowness: Exploring Options

What to do?

There are only 3 possible actions:

• No action - keeping the system as is

• Modifying existing system

• Creating a system from scratch (Excel or an alternative tool)

What costs & benefits to consider? Each option would be characterised by:

• The human cost of working with more or less efficient tools

• Investment in the development and/or implementation

• Auxiliary costs/benefits (which could be substantial in some cases)

  • Examples: Accuracy, Control Level, Simplicity, Error Frequency

  • Those depend on the nature of your business. Banks or accountants usually can’t afford mistakes when it comes to calculations. Construction/property development managers or manufacturing coordinators thrive on simplicity paired with reasonable control when 50 people need to declare their hours or materials use.

How to estimate the cost & impact? You could probably estimate the order of magnitude of such cost, for instance:

• 20 people spending 3 hours per day working with the template. Assuming 225 working days per year at £30/h, that’s £405k/year operation. Cut ⅓, and you saved £135k/year, kudos to you!

• Four critical errors per month requiring 30 hours of rework each (done by managers at £50/h), loss of one client that brought £100k/year at 30% margins and some stress. That’s £8500 cost savings. Plus, less stress and a better reputation.
  

The Truth vs reality

Next quarter, I will sign up for that sports class and take care of that clunky Excel template.

But then there is the end of the financial year.

Or that key project. Or recruitment. Or I am going to change a job in 3 months, and there won't even be enough time to recognise my contribution.

We all know that until it's fire and money is lost, the improvement projects are the toughest to start, silently killing your profitability (and making work less pleasant).

And it's not about laziness at all, but about the fear of the unknown (and a bit of intimacy problem):

• I am an operations manager, not IT Systems & Process Improvement Director. I know the file doesn't work well, but how do I hire someone and make sure they deliver a meaningful change and not repackage the old file and charge us handsomely?

• We have our top-secret data there. And the files are messy. Who would let guests to a dirty apartment? I need to clean them. But what do I do with the important notes... And how do I explain the processes that only I and one senior export know?

STOP! That's all normal and natural. The fact we don't say it doesn't mean that it exists. And we have encountered dozens of such cases just in the last year. We treat your data with *********** (sth like highest confidentiality...) ***** We can also advise you on how to anonymise it. It's not about your data but rather how it is structured.

We do most of the work. Files & data speak for themselves, and the chances are, we completed 7 very similar projects recently and would not only understand the logic in your file but actively recommend improvements and best practices that your larger competitors are using.

I personally take great pleasure in estimating the above savings. Each hour of automated work is like a unique measure of job satisfaction for our team because we know we made someone’s work more fun and productive. They no longer need to manually count all the blades of grass inspect every cell in their Excel spreadsheet.

Yet, I am disillusioned with that and know that such calculations are usually only used to justify the budget. Nevertheless, such investments in commercial environments typically pay off in 5-24 months, noting astounding double or triple-digit ROI.

Mastering Excel Performance: How We Fix Slowness and Boost Efficiency

By solving such challenges, we established the optimal and most cost-efficient approach to fighting Excel slowness and suboptimal Excel systems. We've spent years perfecting our approach to fighting Excel slowness and suboptimal systems to bring you the most cost-effective solution possible.

Our secret? A two-stage process that ensures we fully understand your challenge before suggesting a solution.

1. Detailed Analysis of your challenge and evaluation of the current solution This involves reporting all suboptimal features and suggestions on the optimal arrangement. Depending on the complexity, it may involve speed tests as well.

2. Improvement of the existing solution or redevelopment or suggestion of external tool.

Why not skip straight to the solution? Because it would be a gamble for both of us! Without a detailed analysis, neither of us knows how much work is needed, whether a simple fix, a complete overhaul, or another tool could be more efficient.

Example? A complex Excel file that’s unusable due to its slowness. None of us knows if it would require £2,000 or £20,000 work to amend it. Or maybe it would require implementing a non-spreadsheet system - that’s yet to be discovered. That’s a winner-loser situation! If we (or any other vendor) were forced to quote, you would get some price in the middle, let’s say £11,000. That means either you theoretically lose £9,000 if it was a simple defect, or we lose £9,000 if it required much more work on our part than average.

And what if there was a possibility to use another tool more efficiently?

And we want it to be a win-win.

Imagine you pay £1500 for a detailed analysis.

Then, we both learn what can be done and make more informed decisions.

Maybe it’s something simple we could amend for £300? Or maybe your analyst can amend it quickly? Or perhaps it would require the £20,000 solution, but we would learn along the way that for an extra £2000, we can also solve your other £15,000 challenge. Additionally, we conduct impartial analysis and may suggest you migrate to another type of tool. And we can afford to do that because you are initially paying us for the analysis of the challenge and not for the solution, and we are not forced to provide a solution but to suggest the best one.

And we know that if the best one is in the spreadsheets, we will already be advantageous against competitors because we know your files.

A cost-effective and efficient approach to Excel challenges

Are you tired of dealing with sluggish Excel systems that slow down your workflow and cost you precious time and resources? Look no further than our cost-effective and efficient approach to solving your Excel challenges.

Our process begins with a detailed analysis of your current system, evaluating all suboptimal features and providing suggestions for optimal arrangement. We understand that every challenge is unique, so we take the time to thoroughly understand your specific needs before making any recommendations.

With our evaluation service starting at just £200 GBP, there's no need to worry about committing to a significant financial investment upfront. Our pricing is transparent and based on the complexity of your system, with quotes provided before any work is done.

But our service doesn't stop there. We'll work with you to improve your system's speed and uncover further business improvement opportunities. And don't worry about sharing your files - we'll treat them with the utmost confidentiality, just like a doctor would treat your medical records.

So don't let Excel's sluggishness hold you back any longer. Contact us today via our contact form or book a call to learn more about how we can help you optimise your workflow and improve the speed of your files. And with our initial free evaluation, you'll have all the ammunition you need to convince your board or budget owner that this investment is worth it.