Finance professionals swear by it. Management consultants live in it. And procurement teams everywhere have been stuck with it. Microsoft Excel is simultaneously an amazingly powerful tool and the bane of many people's existence. Our view? Excel is an incredible piece of software. It can be used in many different industries and for a variety of different purposes, including data analysis for procurement teams. That said, it's not purpose built for strategic sourcing and vendor management. And so much of what those processes entail involves more than rote numerical analysis.

Vendorful "plays nicely" with Excel, offering seamless import and export in many modules. Having said that, we think Excel functions best as a complementary tool rather than the platform of record for procurement.