Humans Are Amazing. But Spreadsheets Still Waste Our Time.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t about blaming human error. People are great at making connections, identifying patterns, and thinking strategically. But we’re not built to trace 17 tabs of nested formulas across Excel sheets.

When it comes to processing and managing nature and climate data, the problem with spreadsheets isn’t just the mistakes—they happen in any system. The real issue is the time it takes to find them, the uncertainty they create, and the hours burned fixing something you can’t quite explain.

Excel: Familiar and Flexible, But Dangerously Opaque

Excel is a wonderful tool in the right context. But as datasets get larger, requirements get stricter, and reporting becomes legally binding, it starts to show its age.

With nature and climate data—whether you’re preparing disclosures for CSRD, ESRS E4, or aligning with TNFD—there’s rarely one sheet, one person, or one source. And that’s when small issues snowball:

• A broken formula throws off calculations across thousands of rows

• An unnoticed sorting error misaligns risk scores and locations

• A “helper column” is edited in one file but not the master

• You’re three hours deep into debugging… and still unsure what went wrong

The issue isn’t (usually) the error; it’s the time lost chasing it. Time that could’ve gone toward insight, strategy, or stakeholder alignment.

Nature and Climate Data: High Stakes, High Scrutiny

We’re no longer in the world of “nice to have” when it comes to nature-related and climate-related data.

Today, these insights are tied to:

• Regulatory compliance (e.g., CSRD, TNFD, ESRS E4)

• Investment and lending decisions

• Physical risk management

• Strategic supply chain planning

• Market-facing sustainability claims

And with increasing scrutiny from investors, regulators, auditors (and the public), there’s no room for fuzzy logic or undocumented edits.

Why Automation Wins: Replicable, Auditable, Scalable

When you automate your nature and climate data processes using a trusted platform, you gain something Excel will never offer at scale: reliability you don’t have to babysit.

✔ Replicability

The same inputs will always yield the same outputs. There's no guesswork. No surprises.

✔ Traceability

You can follow the data trail—from raw import to final metric—with complete transparency.

✔ Built-in QA

You can embed validation checks directly in the code, so quality assurance runs automatically. You’re not relying on someone spotting an error after the fact.

✔ Team Efficiency

Instead of chasing file versions or fixing broken lookups, your team is free to focus on insight and action.

“But I Like My Flexibility…”

Fair. Spreadsheets give you a lot of control. You can customize everything. But that flexibility often comes at a cost: fragility.

In a manual workflow, it’s easy to change one thing and break ten others. The time spent maintaining flexibility can eclipse the time you ever spend using it.

Automation may feel less flexible upfront, but in exchange, it gives you:

• Confidence in your outputs

• Faster collaboration across teams

• Time to think, model, plan, and act

And that’s the point: let code do what it does best, and let people do what they do best—create value through interpretation, judgment, and strategic foresight.

You’re Not Reporting; You’re Building Strategy

This shift from spreadsheets to systems is about more than efficiency. It’s about positioning climate and nature intelligence where it belongs: at the core of business operations.

Whether it’s identifying supplier risks in a biodiversity hotspot, understanding the climate resilience of key assets, or preparing a finance-backed ESRS report - these decisions should be based on robust, transparent, replicable workflows.

Not on “that one person who knows where the real numbers live.”

Final Thoughts: Spend Time on What Matters

Nature and climate data will only become more central to how companies plan, report, and compete. And that means your systems need to keep up.

Spreadsheets aren’t evil. But they’re just not built for this.

Automate the process. Trust your outputs. Free your team.

Let them use all the advantages of being human - instead of spending time paying the price for it.

References

European Commission – Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)

Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) – Official Framework

Caudill, H. 2018. Excel hell: A cautionary tale