Excel Spreadsheets In The Age Of AI
Excel refuses to die—even in the age of AI. Why spreadsheets still run supply chains, and what agentic AI means for decision-making inside Excel.
In an April 2019 post, I highlighted a surprise announcement by Microsoft and IBM: a partnership that would enable companies to create and distribute Excel spreadsheets using blockchain. “For years, industry analysts and consultants have urged companies to stop using Excel spreadsheets to run their supply chain processes,” said Edward Chang from Microsoft, “but the reality is that people love Excel because it is easy to use, easy to configure, and has powerful macro-building capabilities. Now, in partnership with IBM, we are bringing the best of Excel onto the blockchain.”
Nothing came out of this partnership because it wasn’t real — it was an April Fools’ joke.
At the time, blockchain was all the rage. In those heady days, I wrote about how “Blockchain Will Solve, Save, Cure Everything” based on these actual headlines:
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PepsiCo announced an industry-first collaboration with Siemens and NVIDIA to apply AI-enabled digital twin technology across manufacturing and supply chain operations. The initiative is focused on simulating, optimizing, and validating production and logistics decisions before making physical or capital changes. Against this backdrop, this survey explored how supply chain and logistics executives are viewing the strategic importance, readiness, and potential value of AI-enabled digital twins within their own organizations.
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Love the blockchain joke callback. Excel's persistance in supply chains isn't just inertia though, it's the flexibility advantage. Most specialized systems cant handle the edge cases and ad-hoc analysis that supply chain people actually need daily. The real question is whether agentic AI inside Excel will finally bridge that gap or just become another macro library that nobody maintains.