The root of all Evil: to believe Excel is your database

It might be the answer to the question: why employees cannot stay away from working with Excel or Powerpoint and consciously avoid business management platforms. They come in handy, they could say, even though there are thousands of business apps in use that can offer better data security and management. Sometimes, these applications need an extension that finally gets back to the old Excel. This is not wrong when Excel and Powerpoint are used accordingly to their functionalities, but very seldom, the employees struggle to operate various tasks of bigger complexity through these tools. The first thing we should know is that the complexity of various tasks exceed the management features of these programs.  Unfortunately, very similar to what happens now regarding GDPR changings, the old databases our clients have, those applications where we collect data are passed down, and they might put some operations in danger. Even though at a first sight these solutions could seem indispensable, once with the implementation of a business platform and some training as well, lives of many employees would certainly change for the better.

The essential difference between data collection and data processing

Event though, at a first glimpse and need a spreadsheet might be the solution, in fact, the data we’ve just archived of that sheet could become useless if they’re not operated effectively and they’re lost in al sorts of folders. Unfortunately, on these applications, we can only record data. The other operations like comparison, results and forecasts exceed the power of Excel or Powerpoint. A simple datasheet cannot replace a business process management, especially when it comes to objectives and results within a company. When we analyze a business process, we want to see the data source, how it was processed and what we should do next to reach a new business objective.

How a business platform could speed up the GDPR compliance process

Imagine all the databases still on Excel datasheets. You may say that is the present situation and there is nothing wrong. However, when it comes to analyze and anonymize data, the excel sheets are useless and very unsecure. Excel spreadsheets are saved in different locations on companies’ servers and it’s very difficult to keep track of them. They also could be stored in unsecure locations once the employees have permanent access to personal data stored on them. These data might be put at risk of all kind of manipulation accidents or losses. The process is time consuming as well and duplicating data is often inaccurate and exposed to human error. The worst is that these errors cannot be easily tracked.

Business Process Management

A business management application or platform meets exactly this kind of need: describe, compare, keep track and secure data. Regarding the GDPR subject, the log system might be the proper solutions that anonymize and keep track of your clients’ activity.
A platform like this allows the employees and managers to set goals for each piece of data, distribute tasks and effectively react to certain breaches. This modern workflow management solution is called "Business Process Model and Notation" — BPMN 2.0 and is the common standard to describe a business process.