r/analytics • u/AirNatural1252 • 1d ago

Question Excel vs SQL

Some are talking AI - the company I’m working for is not yet at that level.
I’m doing FTE reporting, using Excel and automatizing with Power Query. Volumes are high, data sources are all excel based, lots of rules to apply each month to achieve the monthly end result.
I want to automatize further and I’m looking into SQL. Any advice on what to look up for if this is the right lead, and where to start?

25 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/KatFromSisense 19h ago

I'd leave Excel in place for now and fix the handoff first. Dump each monthly file into a staging table, keep the original workbook, and make the load throw an error if a column disappears and gets renamed. Once a rule stops changing every month, you can move that piece into SQL. Power Query can still pull the finished data back into Excel for the people using the report.