Beyond Excel: Decision Intelligence in Practice

Why modern finance needs a new decision layer

For decades, Excel has been the backbone of financial work.

Budgets, forecasts, scenarios, profitability analyses — all of it has lived inside spreadsheets. And to be clear: Excel is not the problem. It remains one of the most powerful analytical tools ever created.

But the way businesses operate today has fundamentally changed.

Markets move faster. Uncertainty is higher. Decisions need to be revisited more often. And finance teams are increasingly expected not just to report results, but to actively support decisions — in real time.

This is where the limits of spreadsheet-centric finance begin to show.

When analysis is no longer the same as decision-making

Excel excels at calculations.
What it does not do particularly well is decision context.

As complexity increases, finance teams often find themselves asking questions such as:

• Which assumptions actually matter most?

• How sensitive is the outcome to change?

• What happens if several variables move at the same time?

• Which trade-off is the “least bad” one?

Spreadsheets can contain the data, but they rarely help structure the thinking behind the decision itself.

As a result, much of the real decision logic still happens:

• in meetings,

• in presentations,

• or in someone’s head.

From reporting tools to decision support

Over the last few years, a shift has been quietly taking place in finance.

The focus is moving away from static reporting and toward decision intelligence — an approach that treats financial data not just as something to be reported, but as input for structured decision-making.

Decision intelligence does not aim to replace financial expertise.
It aims to augment it.

Its role is to help finance professionals:

• understand interdependencies rather than isolated metrics

• explore alternatives rather than single outcomes

• respond to change rather than explain it after the fact

And increasingly, this is happening with the support of AI — not as a black box, but as an assistant that helps process complexity faster than manual models allow.

Why “Beyond Excel”

This series starts from a simple observation:

Many finance teams are still using tools designed for calculation
to solve problems that are fundamentally about decisions.

“Beyond Excel: Decision Intelligence in Practice” explores what comes after spreadsheets — not by dismissing them, but by acknowledging where they stop being enough.

The focus of this rubric is practical and grounded:

• forecasting in uncertain environments

• scenario thinking beyond single “what-if” cases

• understanding profitability, cash, growth, and risk as connected forces

• translating financial insight into actual managerial choices

Not in theory.
But as it happens in real organizations.

A deliberately practical format

This will be a combined series, using different formats depending on the topic:

• visual diagrams you can download and reuse

• short videos explaining decision logic

• concise analytical articles for context

• practical decision playbooks

Each piece will address a concrete financial question — and the thinking behind it.

No hype.
No black boxes.
No “AI for the sake of AI”.

Just a different way of approaching financial decisions in a world that no longer fits neatly into spreadsheets.

Excel isn’t going away. Its role is evolving.

Spreadsheets will remain part of finance.

But the center of gravity is shifting —from files and formulas to decisions and trade-offs.

This series is about that shift.

Bonus resource

To support this series, we’ve added a short self-assessment you can complete on your own.

The “Excel vs Decision Thinking” map helps finance teams reflect on where they currently stand — and whether decision complexity has already outgrown spreadsheet-based models.

👉 Download the self-assessment here

Welcome to Beyond Excel.