The Choice of a Spreadsheet

Chapter 5 - Using Spreadsheets as a Decision Support Tool: An Application for Small Businesses
Managing IT in Government, Business & Communities
by Gerry Gingrich (ed)
Idea Group Publishing 2003

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The Choice of a Spreadsheet

The major problem faced in this project was how to take the conceptual model and turn it into the applied model. The initial idea was to develop a manual or book that small businesses could work through and use to record the results of the analyses that they carried out along the way. This would then lead to recommendations as to what Web site features they should implement. There were two major concerns with this approach. The first was that if the small business user wished to go back and alter any of the data entered, he or she would have to use an eraser or liquid paper. The second concern was how to lead the person to the eventual recommendation once the analysis was completed. The need to follow the somewhat complex paths that were designed through to the various recommendations might have been enough drive the small business person to distraction and a subsequent decision to abandon the process.

It was finally decided that the spreadsheet package, Microsoft Excel, would provide the solution. Most small businesses that have computers use a spreadsheet package, and the majority of spreadsheet packages in use are Microsoft Excel. The spreadsheet has long been recognised as a tool that can be used to support basic decision-making. It provides users with the capability to alter figures and to see the effects the alterations have on recommendations (Stair and Reynolds, 1999). In this case, it provided a means by which the complex path from analysis to recommendation could be handled automatically by the software.

The programming language that is part of Microsoft Excel, Visual Basic for Applications, provided the flexibility to alter the software and the interface easily.

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