Criteria that prove it's time to upgrade (and stop using Excel as your tool assignment)
Resource management
Change management

Criteria that prove it's time to upgrade (and stop using Excel as your tool assignment)

Agathe Placet
Content manager
April 3, 2023
4 min

Choosing an Excel file or an "in-house" tool to manage your employees' assignment is the first reflex when launching your company. However, this is not a reliable enough solution to ensure long-term success.

Poor data centralization, wasted time and energy, errors and data loss: you will quickly notice these many problems that will taint your performance and profitability .

To anticipate possible complications, it is essential to equip yourself with an expert tool in the matter. 

But first, analyze your environment and listen for signs. 

You have reached a critical size or you want to grow and increase your workforce?

Why wait until there are too many people to set up anoptimal assignment process? Take the lead, because without an established process, you risk complicating the transmission of information as soon as you exceed 30 employees. 

And for good reason: information held only in a few heads can compromise the sharing, centralization and retrieval of information by third parties, and thus waste time.

With assignment, you can centralize all your information in one place, so that it can be consulted by anyone, at any time. You won't have any problems if you're away!

You probably use a CRM for sales? An HRIS for employee management? An ATS or a firm for recruitment?

It's normal, you need tools adapted to each process / need! Well, it's the same for assignment, you will see real performance gains by using an expert tool

In addition, Excel is very limiting:

  • It is impossible to create connections with the rest of your ecosystem
  • It suggests a lot of double entries 
  • It prevents the proper flow of data
  • It increases the slowing down of the process of assignment

Do you feel like you're losing performance?

You end up with sub-optimal assignment and follow-up is very difficult. Result: it is the person in charge of assignment who pays a high price : quick phone calls, informal exchanges in the corridor, untimely emails...

Then it becomes difficult to respond correctly to all the requests that are multiplying. You lose time and you answer too late to the customer, you can't anticipate the output of mission... You feel overwhelmed by your data and poorly organized information.

It's time to equip yourself, why wait? Tools exist and are made to answer these essential needs concerning project management, resource allocation and mobilization of your collaborators' skills!

The concrete case of Matters

Difficulties were being experienced in terms of projecting performance over time, internal communication and data transparency. They soon realized thatExcel was showing its limitations in a context of growth.

To remedy this, they called on Napta, a tool that brings them real added value for the financial management of their projects. Matters employees have access and visibility on current and upcoming projects, they can now communicate more accurate information effortlessly. 

Managing your assignment on Excel proves to be very limiting in many respects. Opt for for a dedicated assignment platform, you'll see immediate time savings and a clear return on your investment. 

Things to remember

If you decide to equip yourself with a software assignmentsoftware, don't neglect your efforts and the time you spend on :

Communication: communicating effectively is essential to ensure adoption and designate ambassadors who will help you disseminate information internally. We advise you to favour multi-channel, to take care of the content of your communications and to have a detailed and adapted communication plan.

Training: if your software publisher offers you the possibility of carrying out training sessions, offer them to your employees so that they learn and get to know the tool and especially so that the detractors (if there are any) become ambassadors! 

Onboarding: keep in touch with the ambassadors you have designated at the beginning of the project, and be open to feedback from users. Also, do regular follow-ups with the main stakeholders of your editor during the deployment of the tool.

These are the important points to make your change management a success and guarantee the adoption and use of your software

In short, with a tool assignmenttool, you'll get more efficient and accurate management of your resources, automation of repetitive tasks, better real-time collaboration and deeper data analysis.

Would you like to find out more? We've got plenty of resources to help you go further.

To complement this topic, read our white paper "The keys to an optimal assignment process".

See also our guides, templates and checklists in the Resources tab.

See you soon at Napta!

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