Another day at your merchant cash advance funding business. Pour the coffee and fire up Microsoft Excel, right?
Although it might be the standard for many funders, if you are using Excel to manage any part of your digital funding process, you’re making your job much more difficult (and less profitable!) than it should be.
Excel is familiar, easy to learn, and can display information in a digestible format. However, it simply does not have the capability to leverage the power of big data. Once a science fiction dream, big data now impacts our daily lives in most of what we do—especially how we manage and process funding.
Cloud-based SaaS funding platforms have the power to examine how data is connected. They cross-reference and build a cohesive story of data, rather than a snapshot. To be competitive, build revenue, and attract more customers to your MCA funding business, you need the right tool—a powerful SaaS funding platform.
Not sure? Here are five reasons why Excel spreadsheets need to go the way of the abacus.
1. Your Employees Probably Don’t Like Excel Spreadsheets
Just do a Google search, and you’ll find many videos, articles, and Reddit threads dedicated to hating spreadsheets. Likely the only person you’ll find who claims to “love” Excel is an Excel master (or aspiring participant in the Microsoft Excel World Championship).
Here’s a reality check for employers: While many people claim to be “proficient” on their corporate resumes, most overestimate their grasp of the complex functions of Excel.
Almost every employee has been tasked with providing a report for stakeholders and then spent hours attempting to reverse-engineer a single spreadsheet to display the requested data using Excel. Creating unique, robust reports intended to address the specific interests of each stakeholder can quickly become a tedious, inefficient, full-time job.
This leads to frustrated, unempowered employees.
2. Difficult To Analyze Data
Yes, Excel can be functional to store and analyze data in small volumes (up to a million rows and 16,000 columns per sheet, in fact). It can also be useful to track payment history or calculate fees.
But using Excel for true data analysis? It was never designed to process data on the scale that merchant cash advance funders need.
Using spreadsheets for data analysis can be very time-consuming, taking several days to consolidate the data to generate a sole report. As a consequence, it is nearly impossible to engage in the rapid-fire decision-making necessary to keep up in a dynamic marketplace.
Moreover, making multimillion-dollar business decisions involves analyzing data from multiple sources, cross-referencing key data points, and creating clear visualizations.
While Excel does offer some of these features, fully leveraging them often requires extensive training. Without that expertise, your team might struggle to use the tools effectively, making it harder to feel confident in high-stakes decisions.
3. Clumsy for Collaboration
Excel spreadsheets used to be static documents accessible only on one user’s computer. With the evolution of the cloud, Excel spreadsheets can now be live documents, where multiple users collaborate, make edits, and share real-time updates.
While this sounds like a positive vote for the program, there are several reasons why collaboration and Excel just don’t meet the needs of MCA funders.
Because entering and manipulating data in Excel is a manual process, spreadsheets are extremely susceptible to human error.
With formulas extrapolated across rows and rows of data, even one broken calculation in a single cell can cascade throughout your data, compromising its integrity and leading to financial losses.
About a decade ago, an alarming stat showed that 88% of all spreadsheets contained errors. Fast-forward to today, and that number appears to be rising—spreadsheets with mistakes are up to 94%.
How bad could it be? Here are just three Excel horror stories:
- Power company TransAlta lost $24 million when an employee misaligned the rows in an Excel spreadsheet.
- After entering an incorrect number on a spreadsheet, a Crypto.com clerk accidentally transferred US$10.5 million instead of US$100 into an Australian woman’s bank account.
- Because hidden rows in a report were unintentionally included when converting the file to PDF, Barclays Capital accidentally spent millions buying 179 unwanted contracts from Lehman Brothers.
Even with a proper backup, the high propensity for errors, lack of an audit trail, and the inability to assign roles for individual users means Excel is a risky tool for funders.
Merging data is another problematic area, because when spreadsheets are consolidated, the end user typically has to summarize and collect data, and properly format it all before ever combining the files.
4. Security, Security, Security!
Unfortunately, Excel is not known for its security. It’s very easy to sneak in a hidden row or column of code or add a false formula.
Sure, Excel allows password protection. But as a MCA funder who may use Excel to store some of your customers’ most sensitive data, relying on this level of protection is like leaving your house key under a large, conspicuous fake rock in plain view on the front porch.
Remember, cybercriminals are savvy. Therefore, your cybersecurity strategy needs to be advanced.
A SaaS merchant cash advance funding platform like Onyx IQ has built-in functionality to anticipate and detect nefarious intentions. Onyx IQ protects your information from loss, unauthorized access, and destruction through firewalls, encryption, access authorization controls, and secure data backups.
5. Manual Labor in an Automated World
Many merchant cash advance funders go with Excel because of its low cost. But when you consider the risks, brought about by error and security issues, is the low upfront cost a benefit in the long run?
If Excel is the only tech tool you’re using to manage your MCA funding operation, you might feel like you’re doing the responsible thing, by keeping overhead costs low. However, you’re losing potential deals because of the time lost in managing data inefficiently and the lack of cross-referencing—and errors.
Will a cloud-based funding platform cost more upfront? Absolutely. However, your MCA funding business will likely realize profit far beyond the initial investment because of gained efficiency, security, and clearer business insights, which lead to more educated large-scale business decisions.
Excel vs. SaaS funding platform? There’s no contest.
There’s a Better Way With OnyxIQ
Excel is not an inherently bad program. It has incredible power when used for a limited purpose.
But MCA funding operations are different.
To run your operation as effectively and efficiently as possible, you need a specialized tool—one that takes all the nuances of the merchant cash advance funding lifecycle into account.
There’s a better way.
Onyx IQ was built for MCA funders, by MCA funders, to help you automate every aspect of your operation and get a clear view of your entire workflow—and close more details with just a few clicks.
Schedule a demo today to experience the power of our next-level SaaS funding platform.
