Why teams still rely on Google and Excel spreadsheets for compliance and risk
Spreadsheets are everywhere. They are familiar, accessible, and already built into most businesses’ day-to-day toolkit. That makes them the default starting point for all sorts of governance, risk, and compliance work.
And even when a business invests in dedicated compliance software or other GRC tools, teams often still fall back on CSV exports, offline trackers, and manual spreadsheet workarounds. If the system is clunky, hard to use, or slow to support the process, people revert to what feels quickest and easiest.
That usually means Excel. Or Google Sheets. Or both.
At first glance, that does not seem like a big problem.
It is.
The hidden risks of the spreadsheet comfort blanket
Spreadsheets might feel flexible, but they create serious operational risk when they become the backbone of compliance, privacy, or risk management processes.
While spreadsheets can help with ad hoc tracking, but they are not designed to run modern compliance, audit, or risk management processes at scale.
Research has long pointed to a stubborn issue here: as many as 90% of spreadsheets contain errors. That is exactly why spreadsheet-led processes become risky when they start carrying business-critical work.
The challenge is not just the risk of formula mistakes. It is everything around them too:
- manual processes that drain time and resource
- human error going unnoticed
- version control confusion across teams
- weak ownership and accountability
- no reliable audit trail
- limited visibility for leadership
That is a real issue for any business trying to build defensible proof, especially in regulated environments.
A real-world example, of spreadsheet-led, reactive privacy management
Consider a UK-based healthcare provider, Nottingham University Hospitals Trust.
Before CoreStream GRC, they were managing privacy and compliance processes using spreadsheets, emails, and even pen and paper.
They had 19,000+ employees and were receiving 1000s of data access requests each year, all with a 30-day response window, the team was buried in manual admin work.
That is where spreadsheet-heavy processes start to break down.
When team members were on vacation or unexpectedly off sick, the challenge only grew. Without a single source of truth, it was nearly impossible to reassign work or track ownership and accountability.
“Historically, there was a mixture of requests via paper forms and email; a large proportion came through the post. There was a clear need to standardize, centralize, and digitize. It was certainly a challenge due to the increasing volume.”
— Head of Information Security & Data Protection Officer.
That is the real problem with spreadsheet-led compliance. It may look manageable until volume rises, timelines tighten, or leadership asks for clear assurance.
Replacing spreadsheets with a dedicated GRC tool
It can feel difficult to justify replacing “free” spreadsheets with a system that costs real money.
But that comparison is usually too narrow.
The real question is not whether Excel is cheaper. It is whether spreadsheet-led processes are creating hidden cost, hidden risk, and hidden inefficiency across the business.
IBM’s 2025 research found the global average cost of a data breach was $4.44 million
However, for organizations operating in highly regulated sectors this is often even more expensive. For example, the average healthcare breach cost was $7.42 million, the highest of any industry for the 14th year in a row.
So when teams talk about replacing spreadsheets, they are not really talking about saving admin time. They are talking about reducing operational exposure, improving control, and giving leadership a more defensible view of what is actually happening.
For Nottingham University Hospitals Trust, when evaluating vendors, they focused on three key requirements:
- Robust reporting capabilities
- Streamlined task management
- A full picture and single source of truth
For this healthcare provider, the focus shifted to visibility and assurance:
“Our new tool gives us the entire picture. We know where to focus now, which helps us prioritize and plan for the future.”
These elements not only transformed day-to-day privacy and compliance workflows but also delivered tangible benefits to leadership. The team could now approach privacy management strategically, using data-driven insights to plan hiring, allocate resources, and forecast trends.
Key benefits of upgrading from spreadsheets to a GRC platform
Once the organization moved to a dedicated GRC platform, the gains were not just administrative. They were operational.
Manual chasing reduced. Work was easier to assign. Progress was easier to see. Reporting improved. The team had better visibility of what was happening and what needed attention.
As they put it:
“We used to spend Wednesday mornings manually chasing FOI leads. Now, it’s all automated. We’ve got our Wednesday mornings back!”
This freed-up time enables the team to focus on higher-value strategic goals and continuous optimization:
“We can now plan ahead and proactively improve the service we provide.”
That is a very different proposition from a spreadsheet.
A spreadsheet can store information.
A GRC platform can help the business manage work, assign ownership, track evidence, automate workflows, and report on risk and compliance in a way leaders can actually use.
Why a GRC platform gives leadership better visibility
Leadership visibility is the part that matters most.
Boards and senior leaders do not care that a team shaved a few hours off admin. They care about whether they can see risk clearly, whether obligations are being met, whether issues are being followed through, and whether the business can prove it.
That is where spreadsheets usually fall short.
Without strong version control, audit trails, and live visibility, reporting becomes slower, patchier, and harder to trust. By contrast, Gartner describes modern GRC tools as supporting a unified view of top enterprise risks and helping leaders automate, manage, and report on those risks more comprehensively.
That shift matters because it moves the conversation away from “where is the latest file?” and toward “what needs attention right now?”
Spreadsheets vs GRC software: what changes in practice
Spreadsheets are still useful. They are just not enough on their own once compliance and risk processes become more complex, more cross-functional, or more visible to leadership.
That is when teams start looking for:
The best platforms do not remove flexibility. They replace chaos with structure, without forcing teams into disconnected manual workarounds.
That is the real reason organizations switch.
Not because spreadsheets are bad.
Because they stop being enough.
Moving away from spreadsheets is not just an admin upgrade. It is a shift toward better visibility, better accountability, and better proof.
If your team is still managing privacy, compliance, audit, or risk through disconnected files and manual trackers, the question is not whether spreadsheets still work.
It is how long they will keep working under pressure.
Want to see how this software would look inside of your organization?
Want to hear from other happy clients like Shell Energy, Pool Re and the BBC who updated their GRC processes?
Want to learn more about how a more intuitive and flexible approach to compliance software can help your team move faster with better evidence?
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Spreadsheets are prone to human error, lack version control, and don’t provide audit trails. This makes them unreliable for managing compliance tasks, tracking data access requests, or maintaining regulatory assurance, especially at scale.
While accessible, Excel and Google Sheets can become a liability for risk management. They rely on manual inputs, can’t handle automated workflows, and offer poor visibility across teams. As your organization grows, spreadsheets quickly become unscalable.
A GRC platform centralizes data, automates repetitive tasks, improves accountability, and enables real-time reporting. Teams can prioritize work based on risk, track ownership, and respond to audits or requests faster and more effectively.
Yes, while spreadsheets may seem “free,” the hidden costs of inefficiency, errors, and missed deadlines can be significant. A GRC platform delivers long-term value through improved visibility, resource optimization, and strategic planning.
Yes, the right GRC platform can replace spreadsheets entirely, from tracking compliance tasks and deadlines to managing risk registers, data requests, and audit trails, all in one central, automated system. You just need to find one that is as intuitive to use as a spreadsheet.
A UK-based healthcare provider with 19,000+ employees moved from spreadsheets, emails, and pen-and-paper to a dedicated GRC platform. As a result, they automated manual tasks, improved visibility, and gained time back to focus on strategic goals.
Yes, modern agile GRC platforms are designed to be intuitive and flexible. While they offer structure, many still allow for customization, task management, and data filtering in ways that feel familiar to Excel or Google Sheets users.
