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Don't be. Continuing to use your usual spreadsheets could be costing your business thousands of pounds. Spreadsheets have been a part of 'business' for a very, very long time. You probably see them all the time. Spreadsheets detailing your company risk analysis, spreadsheets tracking employee training levels and spreadsheets detailing all of the minute details that go into your environmental, health and safety program. Unfortunately, spreadsheets are notorious for containing incorrect data.
Whether it's a broken formula or one number in the wrong place due to human error. That one mistake means every future information that may come from that data is wrong to begin with. And these mistakes, they're usually really hard to find. According to the Forbes article I linked above, "Various studies over the past few years report that 88 per cent of all spreadsheets have "significant" errors in them." That's an enormous amount of mistakes. Even if only 1% of your spreadsheet contains errors, that potentially equals thousands of pounds of your business' money basically just vanishing in a 'poof' of Excel cells and regulatory hoohaa. Don't Put Up With Spreadsheet Errors You should never rely on simple spreadsheets to hold all of your invaluable business data. Apart from the large number of errors that are inevitably present in them, it doesn't take much to corrupt a file. And if you created no backup copies, you're in serious trouble. What if that invaluable data is information meant to be used for your Health and Safety program? If you lose it, or, at least 1% of that data is incorrect and it directly pertains to the control measures for work on a particularly dangerous machine, bad things are going to happen. Either you shut down the machine until you can recover or recreate that data, or somebody is injured and you shut down the whole building. Either scenario is terrible for your business. Fortunately, you can easily avoid losing or making mistakes with your Health and Safety data by switching to a software solution. Health and Safety software will not only allow you to input, find, and track all of the safety data you're used to. It's also far more user-friendly and everything is stored in the cloud for ease of access. You'll realise that continuing to use basic spreadsheets to capture and communicate your business' safety data is akin to cavemen rejecting the awesome discovery of fire back in the day and choosing to stay in the cold and dark for the rest of their lives. Health and Safety software will simplify much of your business' time-consuming and difficult health and safety tasks. No more hours spent digging through a dusty box to find that (error-ridden) spreadsheet on regulatory compliance so you can double check an obscure piece of legislation. Health and Safety software will always allow access to up-to-date regulatory information in just a couple of clicks, ensuring that your documents and the measures you put into place to protect your people are compliant. You'll also never lose your data again. Simply because every document, every piece of data, every change you make is uploaded directly to the cloud. Don't be Afraid to Make the Switch If you're big on safety and compliance, and you don't really like torturing people with spreadsheets, then make the switch. You won't regret it. Cloud-based Health and Safety software can be used anywhere you can connect to the internet. This allows you and your safety people to effectively manage your safety program from anywhere. It also provides all of the information your safety people could ever need, right at their fingertips. No more (error-ridden!) spreadsheets and costly, unfindable formula mistakes.
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