Finance Teams: Is Excel In or Out for Data Analysis in 2026?
Our prediction? Excel isn’t going anywhere.
Even with buzzwords like business intelligence and AI-driven analysis everywhere, Excel remains the fastest and most flexible way for many finance teams to analyze and present data. It’s especially effective for ad hoc reporting, board decks, and custom financial analysis. Excel is familiar, powerful, and incredibly efficient when you know your way around it.
Now, of course, we’re big believers in tools like Power BI and Tableau for advanced analytics, dashboards, and enterprise reporting. But the reality we see every day is this: for one reason or another, some teams just want to stick with Excel.
The real question isn’t whether Excel belongs in your reporting stack. It’s how is Excel being used?
The Risks of an Excel Database
Let’s be honest: managing your organization’s data inside Excel can get risky.
Manual exports, copied tabs, broken formulas, overwritten cells — these things don’t usually cause immediate problems. Instead, the risk compounds quietly over time. Eventually, teams start to lose confidence in the numbers, and the manual rework each month to get things just right becomes too much.
We talk to a lot of finance teams who value Excel for good reasons. The truth is, you can do a whole lot in Excel without a steep learning curve. It’s great for ad hoc analysis and end users can iterate quickly on reports without relying on developers.
But relying on Excel alone often introduces familiar pain points any finance pro knows intimately:
Cells are easily overwritten accidentally
Different versions of the “same” report
Broken or hard-to-trace formulas
No clear source of truth
Too much time spent on manual rework
Excel works great as a data manipulator. But, it shouldn’t be your primary data source.
Where The Roghnu Data Warehouse Comes In
For teams committed to Excel-based reporting, a proper data warehouse changes everything.
A data warehouse is a centralized, secure system that collects data from your ERP and other source systems, standardizes it, and stores it in a consistent structure designed specifically for reporting and analysis. Instead of pulling data from spreadsheets, exports, or live production systems, your reports always reference a single, governed source of truth.
A data warehouse provides:
A centralized, governed data layer
Historical consistency across reporting periods
Audit-ready access to financial data
Protection from upstream system changes
This is exactly where Roghnu fits in. Roghnu’s data warehouse provides a much safer alternative to manual exports and copied tabs. We help teams:
Connect Excel directly to ERP and source systems
Automate recurring financial reports
Maintain consistent queries and report structures
Reduce manual exports and reformatting
What That Actually Means Day to Day
When Excel pulls from a governed data warehouse, a few important things happen:
The same query always pulls the same data
Data structures don’t change unexpectedly
Source systems can evolve without breaking reports
Excel reports stay stable month after month
Audits and historical lookbacks don’t require reviving old systems
In short: With Roghnu, Excel becomes what it should be: a presentation and analysis layer — not a fragile system of record.
Excel in 2026? Absolutely.
Even in 2026, with no shortage of business intelligence and automation tools available on the market, Excel doesn’t need to disappear. It just needs better data underneath it.
If your team wants to keep reporting in Excel, without risking data integrity, Roghnu can help ensure the numbers you’re working with are always complete, consistent, and trustworthy.
Talk to us about building an Excel-friendly reporting stack that actually scales.