Is Excel able to stay ahead of growing competition?

Despite growing competition, Microsoft Office remains the front runner when it comes to business productivity software. A staple of corporate America, programs like Word, Excel and PowerPoint are synonymous with what it takes to run a business today. However, do these challengers to the crown actually offer a better product?

To find this out, the Website Associations Now ran a series of articles examining the popular software suite and and some of the alternative versions that are on the market. An interesting divide was discovered: Word and PowerPoint do have to watch their backs because of competition, but it is a different case for Excel and Outlook.

“Spreadsheets were ‘killer apps’ around 1983 or so, but they’ve become somewhat stagnant in recent years. That’s partly because Microsoft Excel was such an amazing effort back in the day, but also partly because spreadsheets are inherently, uh, kind of stale,” the article reads. “Spreadsheets aren’t as easy to reinvent as word processors, and that’s why Excel remains a killer app.”

While the article does look at popular alternative apps like Google Sheets and the Karma mobile app, they fail to measure up to what Excel already offers. With Microsoft releasing the iPad version of the software last month, Excel becomes an even more powerful tool that can not be matched by other solutions.

There is a reason that Office is still considered the must-have business productivity suite. With the help of an Excel consulting firm, any company can take their spreadsheets to the next level.