Field Notes · 12 May 2026
When a spreadsheet is still the right internal tool
AI assistance is not a promotion for every process. Here is how we decide when a well-governed spreadsheet beats a model-backed application.
During discovery interviews we still meet sponsors who treat any remaining spreadsheet as a moral failure. That pressure pushes teams toward chat interfaces before anyone has named the decisions the sheet already encodes.
We ask three questions before recommending software with model assistance:
- Does the process change weekly, or has the column set been stable for a year?
- Are errors expensive because they are rare and severe, or because they are frequent and quiet?
- Would a clearer form and a shared status vocabulary remove most of the pain without generation?
If the answers lean toward stability, quiet frequent errors, and missing vocabulary, we often prescribe a governed workbook or a dull internal form first. AI-assisted drafting can arrive later for the steps that remain language-heavy. The consulting job is to protect budget for the expensive moment — not to decorate every cell with a model call.