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Do’s and don’ts

Excel as a CRM in a family business: where the limits are

Excel isn’t the problem. It’s an excellent tool for lists, inventory, hours, and amounts, and most companies can work well with it. It only breaks down when you start managing relationships in it: interactions, follow-ups, and information tied to a project or order. Below, you’ll find exactly where that line is, what the figures say, and what AI does and doesn’t change.

Last updated: August 20, 2026

Book a Fresh Look → The figures behind this story

First: scrapping Excel is not the recommendation

Anyone who says you should move away from Excel is usually selling something. We say something more precise: use Excel where it’s strong, and put something else in place in the two or three areas where things demonstrably go wrong. At almost every company we work with, Excel remains in use—just no longer as the memory for customer relationships.

What Excel is good at

These are things you shouldn't replace. Setting up a system in their place costs money and yields nothing.

Calculations

Calculations, margins, cost prices. A spreadsheet that calculates one thing and has one owner.

Lists

Inventory, hours, amounts, material lists. Flat data that doesn’t need to be linked.

One-time

An analysis, a scenario, an export you calculate once and then throw away.

Try it

Testing a way of working before documenting it in a system. Often the cheapest first step there is.

Where it breaks down

The same pattern keeps recurring: as soon as data needs to be linked, or multiple people need to maintain it at the same time, Excel is being asked to do something it wasn't designed for.

  • Customer relationship management. A customer isn’t a row. A customer has contacts, conversations, quotes, orders, and history. In a flat spreadsheet, those details get copied or left out—usually left out.
  • Interactions and follow-up. Who called whom and when, what was agreed, and when something needs to be followed up. This is exactly the kind of information that doesn’t fit in a spreadsheet cell, so it stays in someone’s head or inbox.
  • Connect to projects and orders. As soon as you want to see which conversations relate to which order, you start manually maintaining links that a system creates for free.
  • Multiple people at the same time. Two versions, a file in someone's folder, a copy attached to an email. The question “which one's the latest?” takes more time than the work itself.
  • Rights and GDPR. A spreadsheet with customer data has no roles. Whoever has the file has access to everything. In the event of a data breach, it’s impossible to reconstruct who saw what.
  • History. A changed cell is an overwritten cell. What was there last month, and why it changed, is gone.
De grens: losse gegevens tegenover gegevens die aan elkaar hangen HIER IS EXCEL STERK Losse gegevens Voorraad, uren en bedragen Calculaties en kostprijzen Een eenmalige analyse Eén eigenaar, één bestand Laten staan HIER LOOPT HET STUK Gegevens die samenhangen Klant met contactmomenten Opvolging en afspraken Gesprek dat bij een order hoort Vier mensen tegelijk Iets anders neerzetten
The boundary isn’t the number of rows, but whether data needs to be linked. For straightforward cases, Excel is still the best tool you have.

What the research says about errors

This isn’t an opinion. Spreadsheet errors are one of the best-researched topics in business computing, with forty years of audits behind them.

94%

of the operational spreadsheets examined contained at least one error

Panko, overview of thirteen audits (1995–2004)
~5%

of cells contain an error on average — in line with how often people make mistakes during complex thinking tasks (2 to 5%)

Panko
86% / 18%

of the spreadsheets created contained an error, while their creators estimated the chance of one at 18%

Panko and Halverson (2001)
The point isn't that people are careless

Researchers found no difference in error rates between beginners and people with hundreds of hours of spreadsheet experience. Making mistakes is part of thinking; the difference is whether a system catches them or multiplies them. A spreadsheet neatly preserves every mistake and copies it into every formula that refers to it. And people are bad at finding their own mistakes — that last point may be the most important figure above.

Why this matters more in a family business

In a family business, knowledge often sits with a small group of people who have been there for a long time. That is a strength, until the moment of transition.

41%

of critical practical knowledge is held by colleagues who will retire within five years

ROVC TechBarometer, 2026
2 out of 3

entrepreneurs want to stop within ten years; more than four in ten of them have not arranged a successor

ABN AMRO / Ipsos I&O, Dec 2025
5,0

average EBITDA multiple in the SME market — and digitalization is now a factor in valuation

Brookz / Dealsuite, H2-2025

In a this comes back with a name: dependency on a few key people, verbal agreements that aren't documented anywhere, and administration that is not in order. These are not abstract risks — they are the points where a buyer adjusts the price. All figures on this are on the figures page about business transfers, and what a buyer specifically checks on due diligence and exit.

Five signs you're crossing the line

Recognize two or more? Then it's not a matter of paying better attention, but of using tools that no longer fit the job.

Bringing in AI: what to do and what not to do

The temptation is great to unleash AI on the existing sheets and hope that clarity emerges. That's not how it works. AI reads what is there — including what isn't there.

Do
  • Use AI with data that’s already structured: fixed fields, a single source, a clear owner.
  • Use AI to check an existing spreadsheet for errors and duplicate rows before a migration.
  • Let AI handle the tedious data entry: turn an email or call report into an interaction in the right system.
  • Document which data is allowed in which tool. Since the AI Act, that’s no longer optional.
Don't
  • AI as a fix for a messy spreadsheet. A model working with incomplete data gives polished answers that are wrong — and that's more dangerous than no answer.
  • Pasting customer data into a public chat tool without agreeing where that data will go.
  • Expecting AI to know the latest version is in someone's inbox. If it isn't documented, it doesn't exist to a model.
  • Starting an AI project before there’s one place where your contacts are recorded. Then you’re automating the mess.

More on this: AI and governance and where your data goes.

What then — and in what order

Not immediately a large package. The order is more important than the choice.

  1. One place for relationships. Companies, contacts, interactions. Nothing else. This is an afternoon's work, not a project.
  2. Agree on fixed fields. What do you document after a conversation, and who does it? Without that agreement, every system becomes a second junk drawer within a month.
  3. Connect to what’s already running. Proposals, orders, invoicing. Don’t replace them — connect them, so no one has to enter anything twice.
  4. Leave Excel where it works well. Calculations and lists stay in Excel, and pull their data from the source wherever possible.

How we work: one task at a time, fixed price, no six-month engagement. See how it works and integrating systems.

Sources

  • Raymond Panko — review of error rates in operational spreadsheets, covering thirteen audits from 1995–2004; and Panko & Halverson (2001) on creators’ overconfidence
  • EuSpRIG — European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group, which collects documented spreadsheet incidents
  • ROVC — TechBarometer (2026), on practical knowledge and an ageing workforce
  • ABN AMRO / Ipsos I&O — Sector forecasts 2026–2027 (December 2025), on succession
  • Brookz and Dealsuite — M&A Barometer H2-2025, on multiples and valuation

All figures, with their source, year and an assessment of their reliability, are listed on the figures page.

See where you’re losing time

A day observing, followed by a report you can take forward yourself. Even if the conclusion is that Excel is perfectly adequate.

Book a Fresh Look →

The way it works now

  • The appointment is in one colleague's mailbox
  • Data is manually retyped from one system to another
  • The person who knows is on vacation
  • No one can see afterwards why this decision was made

As it is

  • The agreement is stored with the client, findable for everyone
  • Once entered, information flows through to the rest
  • Work continues, even if someone is absent
  • Every decision has a source, an owner, and a date
drag with your finger
What if Peter leaves? Two out of five rules on this page disappear. That's how it feels when knowledge isn't part of the company.

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Free self-assessmentTwelve click questions, three minutes, immediate score and your biggest risk. Fresh LookBusiness case, benchmark and priority. Settled once we build after this. What it costsFixed price per package, no price per user, no hourly billing. From the fieldWhat changed at companies that started with this.

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