Why Excel is No Longer Good Enough

It is undeniable that the business of moving people for work is getting more and more complicated. New regulations are continually being brought in which can significantly shift the global mobility landscape nearly overnight. All the while assignees are becoming less likely to be willing to move due to increased family commitments, an unstable job market and dwindling relocation packages from employers. Juggling all of these separate issues can be tough at the best of times.

Why then, in the face of this constant shift and change in the industry, aren’t we adapting to the times by modernising and streamlining our procedures and workflows? Too many global mobility professionals are still using general-purpose, catch-all programs such as Excel to keep track of their relocations in the most basic ways possible. The regulatory requirements are now too significant for this kind of primitive tracking to be effective.

Since Excel exploded onto the scene in 1993 when it replaced Lotus 1-2-3 as the dominant spreadsheet for business it has become an ever increasingly powerful tool for many aspects of companies’ day-to-day operations. Excel is an extremely useful and effective tool for performing complex and repeated calculations but is not suited to the tracking and reporting needs of the global relocation sector.

Shifting Regulations

The global mobility industry has always been a fast-paced working environment with tight deadlines and changing expectations from task-to-task. Compounding these difficulties are the various regulations which shape how each relocation has to be handled, with the exact combination to be followed dependent on the home and host country of each move. If this complexity wasn’t already enough, governments are regularly updating their laws, meaning it’s easy to get caught out and be met with significant delays.

Many of the more specialised project management tools currently on the market for global mobility practitioners now have these kinds of rules and regulations built into the software. Also, the cloud-based offerings to the market have the added benefit of being continually updated, meaning that you never have to worry about filling in the wrong form or missing out some essential supporting evidence again.

Data Protection

Just think for a moment, have you recently sent an Excel file containing a client’s data by email to a colleague or service provider? Do you have some of your customers’ data currently sitting in a folder on your laptop? Although often necessary when working with unintegrated systems such as Excel, this is extremely risky.

With the ever-increasing focus on data protection around the world, it is essential to ensure that your business is meeting the specific needs of every country you do business in. With the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation by the European Union in 2018 many governments around the world are beginning to update their laws rapidly. The already strict regulations in some countries are going to become even tighter, and the penalties will be high. Those who breach the new European laws, in particular, will be met with substantial fines and possibly jail time for the worst offenders.

One of the more significant problems for those who are looking after customer data at the moment is knowing exactly who has the data, and who is entitled to it at any one time. With each relocation consisting or around 175 individual tasks, it is hard to keep track of where and when an assignee’s personal information is required. Using specialist relocation software eliminates a high number of these uncertainties, as once uploaded in the system, the data is deployed via the software to each service which needs it. This means that you can be confident in the fact that only the exact information required is supplied to the minimum amount of people at the correct time, all while conforming to global data protection laws.

Efficient Working

One of the main drawbacks of using more general software such as Excel for managing projects as complex as those found in the global mobility sector is that much of the necessary information is stored in separate files. Although it is entirely possible, working in this manner is disjointed and inefficient, requiring strict computer labelling and workflow procedures to be effective.

Employee relocation project management platforms eliminate these difficulties by providing an environment where all of the data necessary for your work can be stored together. This also introduces new opportunities for you to combine your workflows and improve efficiency so that you can spend more time building the human-human interactions which make a great and successful relocation. Working in this way lets you leverage your existing data to its full potential, bringing new insights into your business and improving overall productivity and outcomes.