1. Interactivity in layout - ability to drag and drop
2. Access to Relational, Excel and OLAP Data (through a single source)
3. Drill Down capability
4. They are FREE !!!!

XLCubed exhibits at many trade shows around the world and we are constantly asked what XLCubed offers over pivot tables.

In XLCubed version 1 we would demonstrate some of the differences

1. Provide Sensible Drill Down options - indentation of differing levels of hierarchy. In pivot tables every level (or drill) is shown as a new column which means that the screen layout becomes unmanageable.
2. Insertion of columns/rows inside the data is allowed. Simply use Excel to insert columns/rows and the report will continue to function.
3. Complete layout flexibility to create the most complex disjointed report from multiple cubes. At its most extreme every cell in the spreadsheet could come from a different cube.
4. Ability to "Break out" any number into its constituent parts .. Any XLCubed number can be broken down by any other dimension in the cube simply by right clicking on it.
5. Ability to Drill Through to the base transaction information. Any XLCubed number can be Drilled Through to the source data simply by right clicking on it.
6. Ability to simply switch between olap servers and cubes whilst retaining the same sheets.

And people were convinced.

Many of our customers had existing spreadsheets that have made use of pivot tables and have a series of them in hidden sheets which are then referenced through complex formulae so that the end user can get the layout they want.

Formulaes like this one to search for the right number in the pivot table were common …

=IF(ISNA(INDEX($A$47:$EZ$70,MATCH($A23,$A$47:$A$70,0),
MATCH(N$1,$B$47:$EZ$47,0))),0,INDEX($B$47:$EZ$70,
MATCH($A23,$A$47:$A$70,0),MATCH(N$1,$B$47:$EZ$47,0)))

Alternatively, pivot tables were being built programmatically and lots of VBA code then used to copy data from the pivot table. One Japanese bank had a team of programmers writing VBA code to do this and they were able to use XLCubed to reduce the amount of code to near zero.

However, people still liked the interactivity of pivot tables and we listened and introduced a new XLCubed method of working called XLCubed Grids which keeps the drag and drop interactivity and adds a host of other features

1. Keep Only - allowing interactive selection of members from the sheet
   
2. Multi Drill - allowing multiple drill actions on selected cells
   
3. Traffic Light conditional formatting
   
4. Complex ranking and filtering in context of the grid
   
5. Insertable grid columns that persist when drilled or dragged
   
6. Handling of missing members
   
7. Great Performance on large cell sets
   
8. Linked Grids

So now you can have the best of both worlds with pivot table interactivity and XLCubed functionality and flexibility.

Pivot Tables are free and they meet initial needs but once you hit their limits and are spending time working around them there is a better way and it will save you money. Try XLCubed and start saving time.