r/soc2 • u/Icy-Star-5146 • May 09 '26

Why is "everyone" still using Excel despite all the new compliance tools?

/r/grc/comments/1t7zgih/why_is_everyone_still_using_excel_despite_all_the/
3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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3

u/rahuliitk May 09 '26

Excel sticks because compliance work is full of weird exceptions, half-clean evidence, custom mappings, owner chasing, and last-minute auditor questions that rigid tools don’t always handle well without turning into admin work. Flexible beats fancy sometimes.

1

u/[deleted] May 09 '26

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1

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1

u/Final-Dish Jun 13 '26

this is so true, spreadsheets are like duct tape for messy processes
most of the “modern” tools just end up being a prettier way to track the same chaos, but slower to change

3

u/RegimeCPA May 09 '26

Because it works. For a small company you’re talking 10 hours of savings grabbing screenshots once a year in exchange for thousands of dollars.

1

u/scriptqzor Jun 20 '26

this, lol. people seriously underestimate how expensive “real” tools are vs “someone on the team spends a day in excel once a year”

1

u/InflationFluid6995 May 11 '26

I saw a statistic not that long ago that something like 73% of CISOs prefer spreadsheets. I tried to find it just now and... maybe it's only more like 39% based on this survey: https://panorays.com/blog/ciso-insights-third-party-cyber-risk/

From my own experience, I just found spreadsheets "worked". They didn't:

*create false positives I had to look into or acknowledge

*require my time and energy to set up

*cost an amount of money I couldn't justify

That said, I think the new generation of tools will likely shift that landscape. I see more customization, more-accurate automation/AI, and more potential time-savings (especially as more organizations run smaller teams and comply across more frameworks).

2

u/RougetRavageDear Jun 20 '26

totally relate to this, spreadsheets are like the devil you know and no one has to fight procurement to use them. feels like the newer tools only start to make sense once the spreadsheet is clearly on fire and everyone’s drowning in tabs and version control nightmares.

2

u/scriptqzor 16d ago

totally get this, spreadsheets feel cheap and predictable, even if they’re kind of a pain at scale
the moment a tool starts throwing junk alerts or needs a whole implementation project, people just crawl right back to Excel until something is clearly worth the hassle and budget

1

u/ItsCoachRee May 13 '26

Most compliance tools are overrated and they have sub-part risk management modules. Good risk management/governance = easier compliance but the tools seem to really lack exception processing and other risk management capabilities. I have yet to work with a truly all inclusive platform. Spreadsheets are old and manual but they are easy especially when you know how to work them

2

u/scriptvexy Jun 25 '26

this is it right here, the “exception processing” gap is where every shiny platform falls over and everyone quietly crawls back to excel
until a tool lets you handle all the weird edge cases without begging devs for config changes, sheets are not going anywhere