Your Operations Run on Spreadsheets. Here's What Your Options Actually Look Like

Almost every operations problem I get called about starts the same way.

A spreadsheet that used to work.

The failure is never dramatic. It's a sales sheet that two people edit at once. A pricing formula someone broke three months ago that nobody noticed. Daily totals that get manually re-typed from the POS every night. An inventory tracker that only one employee understands.. and they're on leave.

If that sounds familiar, here are your realistic options. I've implemented all of them, so this is the honest version.

Option 1: Keep the spreadsheet, kill the manual encoding

Sometimes the spreadsheet isn't the problem. The re-typing into it is.

For a small retail client, I connected their POS system directly to their tracking sheets. Daily sales, expenses, and payment types now sync automatically. Manual encoding dropped to zero, and the owner kept the interface they already knew.

Best for: small teams where the spreadsheet structure still works and the pain is purely data entry.
Typical effort: days, not months. Usually the cheapest fix available.

Option 2: Move the process into a real app (Power Apps + Dataverse)

When the pain is structure.. multiple people needing controlled access, approvals, audit trails.. no amount of automation saves the spreadsheet. This is where Power Platform earns its keep.

Real examples from my own delivery:

• An engineering checklist process for an energy sector client, rebuilt as a Canvas App with automated flows. Processing time down around 70%.
• A not-for-profit running on fragmented records across files and inboxes, replaced with one centralized account and employment tracking system. One source of truth instead of five almost-matching ones.

Best for: teams already on Microsoft 365. You're likely already paying for much of the foundation, and the app inherits your existing security and user accounts.
Typical effort: weeks. Governance and access control come built in.

Option 3: When it's bigger than that

If the system is customer-facing or genuinely unique, custom development enters the picture. That's a longer conversation (I wrote a separate piece comparing Power Apps and custom software honestly), but for most internal operations problems, option 1 or 2 gets you there faster and cheaper.

How to tell which one you need

If the pain is re-typing, automate around what you have.
If the pain is control, structure, or approvals, move it into Power Apps.
If the pain is your customers' experience, that's a different project entirely.

The honest caveat: the wrong move is jumping straight to the biggest option. I've seen businesses commission custom software for problems a two-week Power Automate build would have solved. Diagnose first. That part is a short conversation, and it costs you nothing.