Why the same file keeps bouncing between departments, and how to end the game
You probably know the game. Sales exports a customer list and sends it to finance. Finance adds payment terms and sends it back. Someone in management adds a column, renames the file "_final_v3" and forwards it. A week later there are four versions in four inboxes, and nobody is sure which one is right.
That's corporate ping-pong. Everybody is working hard, and the ball never lands.
What it costs
Time. Every round means exporting, merging, checking and re-sending. It rarely shows up as a task in anyone's plan, but it eats hours every week.
Accuracy. Each copy drifts a little. A corrected address in one version, an updated deal in another. By the time a decision is made, it's based on a mix of old and new.
Trust. When numbers depend on which file you opened, meetings turn into arguments about the numbers instead of decisions about the business.
Risk. Customer data in email attachments is hard to keep track of and hard to delete. Under the revised Swiss data protection law, that's a problem you don't want.
Why it happens
Spreadsheets aren't the villain. They're quick, flexible and everyone knows them. Ping-pong starts when a spreadsheet becomes the place where shared data lives, because the systems don't hold it, don't connect, or are too awkward to use.
How to end the game
1. Find the balls. List the files that travel between departments every week or month. Usually there are only a handful: customer lists, pipeline overviews, open offers, revenue reports.
2. Give each one a home. For each file, decide which system should hold that data. Customer and deal data belongs in the CRM, financial data in accounting or the ERP.
3. Share views, not files. Instead of sending an export, give people access to a report or view in the system. Everyone sees the same live data, and nobody has to merge anything.
4. Connect the systems that need to talk. If the CRM and accounting both need the customer, sync it automatically. A manual copy is just ping-pong with extra steps.
5. Keep spreadsheets for what they're good at. One-off analysis, quick calculations, modelling a scenario. Not as the shared record of your customers.
Further reading
If spreadsheets are still at the centre of your reporting, these two posts go deeper: why SMEs should ditch spreadsheets and overcoming the spreadsheet-centric reporting culture.
Wondering how much of your work still runs on spreadsheets and hand-offs? Take our free AI-Readiness Check: twelve questions, about three minutes, and you see your score in five areas straight away.
Where to start
Our Digitalization Audit finds the files that bounce around your company, shows where the data should live instead, and ranks what's worth fixing first.
