Walk through almost any business running an ERP and you will find them: spreadsheets kept alongside the official system. A planning sheet a manager maintains by hand. A tracker that gets updated from the ERP and then diverges. A workbook that is, quietly, where a particular team actually works. The usual reaction to these is mild disapproval: users going around the system, a discipline problem. In our opinion that reaction throws away the most valuable information in the building.
A shadow spreadsheet is evidence, not misbehaviour
Nobody maintains a spreadsheet for fun. A spreadsheet running next to the ERP exists because, for some specific task, a person decided that maintaining a separate tool by hand was less bad than using the official system. That is a considered judgment, made by the person closest to the work, and renewed every single day they choose to update the sheet instead of abandoning it. It is not laziness. It is the opposite of laziness. It is someone doing extra work because the alternative is worse.
What the spreadsheet is precisely telling you
Each shadow spreadsheet is a pointed, specific piece of feedback about where the ERP fails to fit:
- What it contains is data the ERP either does not hold or does not hold in a usable shape.
- What it calculates is a report or a view the ERP does not provide, or provides in a form nobody trusts.
- How it is structured is the mental model the team actually uses, which may not be the model the ERP was configured around.
- The fact that it is updated by hand is a measurement of how badly it is needed: someone is paying a daily cost to keep it alive.
A requirements workshop asks people to imagine what they need. A shadow spreadsheet shows you what they need, in use, proven by the effort spent maintaining it. It is the more reliable document.
Why "ban the spreadsheets" fails
The instinct, especially after an implementation, is to stamp the spreadsheets out: the ERP is the system of record, so everyone should be in it. But a spreadsheet that survives a ban does not mean the user won. It means the need was real and the ERP still does not meet it, so the spreadsheet goes underground, less visible and just as necessary. You cannot ban a requirement. You can only stop being able to see it.
The position, stated plainly
Before dismissing the spreadsheets beside your ERP, read them. Each one is a place the system does not fit, identified by the person who feels the misfit every day, and quantified by the effort they spend compensating for it. That is not a discipline problem to be corrected. It is a requirements document to be acted on, and it is more honest than anything a workshop will produce.