Still Asking for Excel After Qlik? Here’s What’s Actually Broken

Read time: 2.5 minutes

What are some ways to protect Qlik Apps from being compromised by Excel?

1. Build for selections rather than screenshots.

Qlik's main strength is associative exploration: if a user exports data from their app into another application, it is like bypassing associative exploration.

To solve this, designer workflows must be built around central questions, so the user has a clear starting point.

2. Create insight visibility versus insight obscurity.

Typically, exports occur when people can't quickly see the answer to their question. Therefore, the following should be added to reports to create visibility of insights.
• KPI tiles with context (up or down from prior period)
• Comparative insights
• Highlight outliers

If there is no visibility, they will export to Excel.

3. Create trust before creating features.

Once users start questioning data in Qlik, they turn to Excel as an alternative because they trust it more.

Creating the following items will create trust:
• Standardized Master Measures
• Consistent and clean data model
• No conflicting definitions

Without trust, there will be no adoption.

4. Decrease need for "working outside" of Qlik.

Users will export data from Qlik for manual data manipulation. Therefore, replacing this need by providing the following features:
• Drill-down capabilities through dimensions
• Intelligent filtering
• Pre-build views so that there is less of a need to import data into other applications

The goal is to continue thinking within the Qlik environment, not outside it.

5. Define your standard. The App serves as the single source of truth.

When users have no issue using Excel as an alternative, it will become the default.

In order to change this behavior, ensure that:
• Qlik is your decision-making tool.
• Excel is an exception to your decision-making tool

If the App is not the destination, then it is optional.

💡Key Takeaway: 

Using Excel as the output format indicates you did not provide insights… instead, you created additional actions for users to perform.