Almost every B2B business starts its revenue operations in spreadsheets. At first, they are the ultimate quick fix: low cost, highly flexible, and universally understood. In the early days, when you are tracking a handful of deals, leads, and contacts, spreadsheets give you just enough control to feel organised.
But as soon as you hit growth mode, cracks appear. What once felt efficient starts slowing you down. The very thing that kept your business moving now holds it back.
This article unpacks why spreadsheets become a bottleneck for scaling organisations, the hidden costs you might not be seeing, and why HubSpot, implemented correctly by a specialist partner like Project36, becomes the platform that powers growth instead of constraining it.
1. The Spreadsheet Trap
Manual Data Entry and Errors
Spreadsheets demand constant manual updates. Sales reps log calls, marketing teams paste in lead data, and managers reconcile version after version. Every entry is a chance for human error. When you multiply those errors across hundreds of rows and multiple teams, accuracy becomes a fantasy.
At Project36, we have seen scaleups with “master” sheets that contained five different definitions of what a qualified lead was. The result: confusion between teams, missed handovers, and wasted marketing spend.
No Single Source of Truth
In spreadsheets, every department tends to create its own version of reality. Marketing might have a lead gen tracker. Sales runs a pipeline forecast. Customer success keeps a renewal sheet. None of these are in sync.
The result is siloed data; exactly what RevOps (revenue operations) was designed to eliminate. Without alignment, friction builds. Sales blames marketing for poor-quality leads. Marketing blames sales for not following up. Leadership loses confidence in the data.
Time-Sucking Reporting
Boards and investors demand numbers. In a spreadsheet-based company, reporting week means chaos. People scramble to pull numbers, cross-check versions, and reformat into slides. We have seen scaleups spend 30 to 40 hours a month just preparing board packs; time that could have been used to actually generate revenue.
Collaboration Bottlenecks
Even with cloud sharing, spreadsheets are clunky. People overwrite each other’s updates. Sensitive data gets emailed around. Access controls are inconsistent. In regulated industries like Fintech, this is not just inefficient; it is a compliance risk.
👉 This is what we call the Spreadsheet Trap: the illusion of control that quickly becomes chaos as your business grows.
2. The Hidden Cost of Staying in Excel
Spreadsheets might feel free. The true cost of staying “spreadsheet-first” shows up in ways most businesses do not measure.
Lost Deals from Slow Follow-Up
When leads are not tracked in real time, response times slip. Response time is everything. Studies show that B2B companies who respond within five minutes are 21 times more likely to qualify a lead. With spreadsheets, that is virtually impossible.
Poor Forecasting and Missed Targets
Excel cannot give you pipeline visibility across every deal, rep, and stage. Forecasts become educated guesses. When you consistently miss forecasts, you lose credibility with your board, investors, and even your own team.
Compliance and Security Risks
In industries like Fintech or Engineering, data accuracy is not optional. A missed GDPR opt-out, a mishandled PII record, or a spreadsheet emailed to the wrong recipient could trigger audits, fines, and reputational damage.
Employee Burnout
Nobody joined your company to spend their career reconciling CSVs. But that is what happens in spreadsheet-first environments. Smart people waste hours every week doing low-value admin, which drains morale and increases churn
3. How HubSpot Changes the Game
At Project36, we believe: if it touches revenue, it touches HubSpot.
HubSpot is not just a CRM; it is a complete revenue engine. It solves every pain point of spreadsheets by giving you a single source of truth across marketing, sales, and service.
Automated Data Capture
Forget manual logging. HubSpot automatically tracks emails, calls, meetings, form submissions, and website activity. Data accuracy soars while admin time plummets.
One Unified CRM
Everyone works from the same record. Sales sees marketing engagement. Customer success sees full account history. Leadership sees the pipeline in real time. Alignment becomes the default, not the exception.
Real-Time Dashboards
Instead of waiting for month-end chaos, leaders can see performance on demand. Pipeline, forecast, revenue attribution; it is all there, updated live.
Seamless Integrations
HubSpot connects to thousands of tools. Whether you use Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn, DocuSign, or Slack, it all flows into the CRM automatically. That means no more silos, no more exporting CSVs, no more copy-paste.
4. Quantify the ROI of Moving Off Spreadsheets
It is one thing to talk about efficiency. It is another to show it. That is why we built the Project36 HubSpot ROI Calculator.
Here is what it does:
Estimates your annual cost of staying in spreadsheets (lost productivity, revenue leakage, tool sprawl).
Models the investment in HubSpot + Project36 (licenses, implementation, support).
Shows the ROI at different improvement levels (5 percent, 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent).
Calculates your payback period so you know when the investment returns profit.
Even small improvements add up. For example:
A team of 10 salespeople saving just five hours a week in admin = £100k+ in annual recovered value.
A modest 10 percent uplift in conversion rate = hundreds of thousands in additional revenue.
Migrating away from spreadsheets feels daunting. Leaders worry about disruption, data migration headaches, or team adoption. That is why Project36 has built services specifically to make it simple.
Free HubSpot Account Audit
Our Free HubSpot Account Audit benchmarks your current set-up and shows where you are leaking revenue. Even if you are not yet using HubSpot, it helps identify process gaps that will slow growth.
RevOps Framework
Our RevOps Framework is a proven methodology that eliminates silos, defines processes, and implements HubSpot in a way that supports scale.
