Excel Is Dead: FP&A Team Now Builds Models in PowerPoint
It started, as most modern corporate absurdities do, with a single sentence in a leadership Slack thread: “Do we really need Excel for this?”
Cue the floodgates.
Someone (from Marketing, naturally) posted a Medium think piece on how “spreadsheets are a relic of the past.” Someone else chimed in about their nephew using Notion for budgets. The COO asked if Tableau could just “handle the modeling.”
By the end of the week, the company’s FP&A team was politely asked to “explore modernizing their toolset.”
The punchline? Within three weeks, the team was building their models—in PowerPoint.
And as ridiculous as that sounds, the story holds a mirror up to what I see happening across a lot of finance teams today.
So let’s break it down.
The Setup: Death by a Thousand “Modernization” Initiatives
The company? A well-funded Series D SaaS unicorn.
The FP&A team? Smart. Experienced. Strong modeling chops.
The problem? Leadership had developed a collective allergy to anything that looked “old school.”
It started innocently enough:
- The CFO wanted more “visually engaging” outputs for board decks.
- The CRO complained that Excel models “weren’t collaborative enough.”
- The CEO’s chief of staff suggested that “modern finance teams use dynamic dashboards.”
Pretty soon, Excel was on life support.
The Shift: From Models to Slides
Here’s how it actually played out:
| Stage | What Happened |
|---|---|
| “Modernization” kickoff | FP&A told to explore tools |
| Tool evaluation | BI tools couldn’t handle modeling complexity |
| Quick workaround | Started building simplified assumptions in PowerPoint tables |
| Full collapse | Finance leadership started requesting “final” models directly in slide format |
By month three? Entire operating models were being built in PowerPoint tables. Yes, with manual calculations. Yes, copy-pasted. Yes, with version control managed via email chains.
And yes, it was a disaster.
The Warning Signs: How to Know You’re on This Path
I’ve seen this happen more than once. Here are the telltale signs:
1. Leadership starts optimizing for presentation over accuracy
When the primary feedback on your model is “Can we make this chart more on-brand?”
2. Decision-makers stop engaging with model drivers
If you hear “Just show me the summary slide,” you’re already in the danger zone.
3. BI tools are treated as replacements for modeling
Dashboards are great. But they’re not scenario engines.
4. Finance gets pushed to deliver in “collaborative formats”
Translation: Formats that are easy to screenshot, not formats that are built for decision-making.
5. Operators start bypassing Finance for modeling
Because the Finance outputs are now too sanitized to be useful.
Why This Happens: The Seduction of the Pretty Deck
The truth? A gorgeous slide deck is seductive. It makes the numbers feel polished. Digestible. Safe.
But the second you lose visibility into what’s driving those numbers, you’re flying blind.
As one FP&A lead put it to me: “We went from pilots to flight attendants. Smiling, serving up pre-packaged metrics, but not flying the plane anymore.”
What’s Lost: The Real Cost of Killing Excel
Here’s what the company actually lost in this shift:
| Capability | Lost Outcome |
| Dynamic scenario modeling | No fast pivoting on new assumptions |
| Driver-based forecasting | Static, high-level projections |
| Sensitivity analysis | Gut-feel decision-making |
| Version control with audit trail | Conflicting slide decks |
| Operator engagement in modeling | Operators building their own side models |
In short? Finance ceded its seat at the strategy table.
The Underlying Issue: Misunderstanding What Modeling Is For
Too many leadership teams think modeling is about producing a pretty number.
It’s not. It’s about:
- Testing assumptions
- Understanding sensitivities
- Driving tradeoff decisions
- Preparing for uncertainty
And guess what? You can’t do that in PowerPoint.
A Better Way: Modernize How You Use Excel, Not Whether
I’m not anti-modernization. I teach teams how to do this the right way.
Here’s how:
1. Clean up your models
- Use Power Query to automate data pulls
- Structure models for transparency and flexibility
- Build scenario engines, not static forecasts
2. Separate calculation layer from presentation layer
- Do the modeling in Excel (or your modeling tool of choice)
- Drive the outputs into dashboards or board decks
3. Train leadership on how to engage with models
- Teach them to ask: “What’s driving this? What are the assumptions? What’s the sensitivity?”
4. Protect core modeling time
- Don’t let Finance become a slide factory
- Guard time for actual analysis and decision prep
Why This Matters: In Uncertainty, Speed of Insight Wins
Here’s the punchline:
The company I’m talking about? When the market turned six months later, they were caught flat-footed.
They couldn’t run new scenarios fast enough. They didn’t know which levers to pull. Operators stopped trusting the Finance numbers.
Eventually? They quietly rebuilt the Excel models. But by then, the credibility damage was done.
Don’t Throw Out the Toolbox
This article took real time to write because I want more CFOs and operators to see through the “modernization theater” that’s infecting too many Finance teams.
If you found value in it, please share.
And if you want to go deeper—whether it’s modernizing your modeling stack, building faster scenario engines, or up-leveling your team’s strategic impact—I offer 1:1 consulting for Finance pros ready to level up. DM me if you want to talk.
And I’ll leave you with this question:
If your board asked for three new downside scenarios today—could your team deliver by end of week?
If that makes you sweat—it’s time to fix it.
