2. Sourcing Capital _ For Expansion or Startup. You can make it easier for banks and prospective investors to back you financially and/or take the decision to buy into your business. Those already running their businesses will know that banks like to see detailed business records that show in real terms all aspects of a business' performance. Without detailed and comprehensive spreadsheet tracking, it might be difficult to show this. Agreed there are software applications that capture most of these. However, sometimes, you want to highlight certain scenarios or trends in a way that an off_the_shelf application cannot accommodate due to the uniqueness of your need. It is in this regard that the use of spreadsheet tracking becomes relevant.
So, (when considering the automation I speak about) do not think about spreadsheet documents containing one or two click_able buttons that allow a user print a page or copy some cells from one sheet to another. Instead, I want you to picture an application(or Entreprise Information System) that customises the appearance of your spreadsheet workspace(to take advantage of maximum screen capital available on your PC), and offers you custom "floating" data entry forms.
For instance if a company had five drink brands in the market but notices that Brand A, which has a profit margin of at least twice the others is in greatest demand, they could (a) focus production efforts on that brand, so that more bottles go out to trade (b) Apply Best Practice/Continuous Improvement initiatives that would result in lower costs of producing each bottle of Brand A so that even though the market price remains fixed, the company is able to earn increasing profit margins per bottle.
In effect what I am saying is that companies which get the most value from spreadsheet automation(including using it to avoid expenditure on less adaptable commercial off the shelf applications) will be those which empower their users to routinely generate "in house" solutions. In such companies, you will find that only when the requirement becomes considerably specialised or complex, does the IT department get called upon to develop or purchase software solutions for user departments or functions with significant data recording and analysis needs.