Why should I use an Excel consultancy instead of a freelancing website?
Businesses with complex problems, data security concerns and long term support requirements prefer to work with established Excel consultancies. The experts at specialist Excel consultancies get more opportunities to work on those problems than freelancers on sites like Fiverr and Freelancer, so can work at a higher level. That virtuous circle helps Excel consultancies offer a premium service when it’s required.
The downside is that, if you approach us with a simpler task, we will still need to bill at a premium rate. At Excel4Business, we try to mitigate that with a half hour minimum charge but we are not trying to compete on cost with the big freelancing sites.
Freelancing sites are very much a do-it-yourself option, following a typical recruitment process. If you are putting a project out to tender, it needs to be well-defined because freelancers need to know whether it’s worth applying. You then need to decide who’s going to do the work. An Excel consultancy requires very little information up front because they will allocate you to someone appropriate based on their availability and time zone. It is taken for granted that everyone is an Excel expert. If you expect to require specific skills such as Power Automate, we would factor that in.
Another possible advantage to freelancing sites is that they serve as a third-party providing buyer protection and a means to resolve disputes. At Excel4Business we generally don’t ask for any money up front because, when starting a long-term relationship with a client, there is no need. As a client, you don’t need buyer protection if you’re only expected to pay a fixed price on satisfactory completion. To protect ourselves, we make exceptions for very small one-off projects so these may be better addressed through a freelancing website.
It is worth stressing that you can find plenty of very talented people on freelancing websites, and some of our consultants have graduated from them. In terms of skills, working as a full-time Excel consultant requires communication skills beyond those required by freelance developers. That’s because our gurus tend to play an active role in defining a project’s scope and must be able to explain their plans to clients. Needless to say, we don’t outsource our work.
What follows is a detailed dive into some of the differences between working with us and a generic freelancing site. A summary of those areas is listed in the table below:
| Consideration | Excel Consultancy | Freelancing Sites |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of Communication | Local consultants free to use preferred software like Microsoft Teams | Restrict communication to on-platform tools to retain control of process |
| Procurement Process | Expert can be allocated from a skeleton project scope | Customer chooses who to work with, freelancers expect a well-defined project scope |
| Data Security | Files kept onshore with consultancy liable for breaches | Individuals may be impossible to trace |
| Buyer Protection | No third party, taking money on completion can protect | Website guarantees the marketplace and will reimburse losses |
| Support for Completed Solution | Longstanding businesses can re-assign projects when required | Support depends on availability and willingness of original freelancer |
| Cost of Service | Premium service focused on guaranteeing a good ROI | Variable cost but lower rates |
How do I talk freely with an Excel guru?
If you work with Excel4Business, there are no constraints on communication with our consultants though we expect our experts to write up any agreements you make. The same applies to other Excel consultancies with a few exceptions who offer pre-paid and pre-booked consultations. If you use Upwork, Freelancer or Fiverr to locate an Excel guru, you may be forced to correspond through platform approved channels. The platforms do not have a close enough relationship with individual freelancers to allow complete freedom.
The freelancing sites place most restrictions on contact before receiving an order. If you commission a spreadsheet from a freelancer, there will generally be no issues in demonstrating their solution in Microsoft Teams. The barrier does exist pre-order so, if your project scope is not well-defined or you’re looking for a consultant led solution, a freelancing site would force you to pay for an off-platform consultative process.
The other consideration with talking freely is how your Excel expert will interpret what you’re saying, and how they read between the lines. Some of that is about experience but it’s also about sharing a common business language and culture. Excel4Business only works with English speaking consultants from North America and Europe. Our interview process heavily stresses communication skills and we choose people who can talk about spreadsheets in plain English. If someone’s talking about DAX and ODBC connections then that doesn’t encourage conversation.
You can find good communicators on the freelancing platforms although AI means it’s now harder to gauge someone’s communication skills based on the way they write. As the nature of the platforms discourages pre-order conversation, that creates a risk that things get lost in translation.
How easy is it to get the right person to start work on my Excel project?
If you contact an Excel consultancy, they will set up you up with an expert and you can decide if they’re a good fit for the work. If you post a project on a freelancing website, the right person will have to be interested in your project, and you will then need to identify and distinguish them from other applicants.
When it works, the consultancy route can be very low hassle. You fill in a web form, maybe send across some existing files, spend half an hour talking through your project, get a quote, and approve them to move forwards. The consultation is time well spent because the consultant understands what’s required and you haven’t had to create a formal tender document. That should be your expectation, and it’s an expectation we work hard to meet at Excel4Business.
We would recommend shopping around. Obviously if you do want to compare three quotes then the process takes three times as long. Assuming all the quotes are reasonable, the consultations will help you decide who to work with but it becomes a more demanding process.
At a certain point, particularly for simple projects, the freelancing sites may be less hassle. The main time cost when using a freelancing site is in defining your requirements. If you want AI to assist in writing a scope, you may find it gives you a solution. After all, if AI misinterprets your scope then a freelancer is likely to make the same mistake.
Once you’ve written a scope, you need to decide whether to put it out to general tender or just to approach individual freelancers. If you want to approach individual freelancers, you will need to spend time identifying them and the process isn’t too different to contacting a range of Excel consultancies. If you want to offer the project more widely, you will need to spend time reviewing respondents and asking follow-up questions.
The consultancy process should be easier with a greater assurance of quality because that’s one of the things you are paying for.
Will my data be secure with a remote Excel consultant?
Sharing data externally is never risk-free but you can minimise the risk by working with an established firm with an appropriate non-disclosure agreement in place. It also helps if access is restricted to a single individual in a country that respects corporate security on both a legal and cultural level.
Excel consultancies with multiple consultants generally tick those boxes. You might want to go further and ask how long they’ve been in business for (Excel4Business.com has been operating continuously since 2008), where they store your data (our e-mails are kept on dedicated servers in the UK), and confirm that the expert you talk to will genuinely be performing the work themselves. There may be further markers that they take data processing seriously; Excel4Business is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office in the United Kingdom.
One advantage of an Excel consultancy of a freelancing website is that they can easily sign bespoke non-disclosure agreements prior to discussing a project. Freelancing websites would expect any pre-order NDA to be agreed on-platform which can introduce friction if the NDA needs to be circulated internally and you do not have the authority to sign the document yourself. Restrictions on sharing contact details also limit your ability to conduct due diligence.
The chance of any Excel expert deliberately breaching commercial confidence is probably lower than for your regular employees. Your employees are specialists in your area of business, know your competitors and may well be planning to work for them in future. An Excel specialist’s income depends on their reputation. If you want to hire a freelancer to process sensitive information, you would not choose someone without a significant history on the platform.
A second risk may lie in the fact that, at specialist consultancies and on freelancing websites, consultants will be using their own hardware. As all Excel developers are computer literate, they may be less likely to fall for a phishing attack than regular administrative staff. However, it is important that specialists maintain up-to-date anti-virus and do not access sensitive files on insecure connections.
When looking for an Excel developer, should I use a freelancing site for their buyer protection?
Freelancing sites use escrow accounts to ensure sellers only get paid once they have completed a job. At Excel4Business we prefer the simpler model of only requesting payment once we have completed a job. Both methods protect the buyer in a way that paying up front does not. Even so, if you pay for a service by credit card or PayPal, you should always be able to recover the funds if the service is not delivered.
The main difference between the methods is in how much hassle it is to keep or recover your money if the service is not delivered. Freelancing websites work to keep both buyer and seller protected. So, in case of payment dispute, you must follow a freelancing site’s procedures to stop the funds being released to the seller. If you agreed to pay an Excel consultancy on completion, the money remains in your pocket until the work is done.
The freelancing sites shine when both the buyer and seller want protecting. At Excel4Business, we’re not comfortable with extending credit to individuals or micro-businesses. In those circumstances, we want additional protections as a seller because the risk of non-payment is higher. As we do not operate escrow accounts, we are forced to request payment upfront. If that doesn’t work for the buyer, we can’t work together.
That means if there are questions over your creditworthiness as a buyer, it may be better to use a freelancing site than an Excel consultancy.
Will an Excel consultancy provide on-going support for my completed solution?
Yes, one difference between hiring an Excel consultancy and an individual freelancer is that the consultancy can assume responsibility for your file should the sheet’s creator no longer be available. They will also have some level of access to archived e-mails should the file contain a long forgotten password.
One feature of Excel work-for-hire is that it is rarely cost-effective to fully document any Visual Basic code in the completed files. Unlike larger IT projects, solutions tend to be built by a single expert so documentation is not required to bring everything together. The payback period of solutions tends to be measured in months, so the risk of a consultant becoming uncontactable is often only a secondary consideration.
However, good spreadsheets tend to stick around for years whilst becoming increasingly embedded in a company’s operations. At Excel4Business, we know clients are still using solutions we developed almost 20 years ago because they come back requesting updates. Prospective clients approach us with even older spreadsheets looking for help because the original developer has moved on or retired. If you hope your spreadsheet will last that long then you should consider whether the support will still be there when you need it.
If you’ve connected with an Excel developer through Upwork, Freelancer or Fiverr and have kept your communication on-platform then you are relying on them continuing to use the site. If you’ve found an individual consultant elsewhere then shifts to their working patterns may mean they no longer have the time to support, especially if your request is urgent. Only by working with a multi-consultant team can you guarantee support will be there when required.
One reason Excel4Business can pass spreadsheets between consultants is that the spreadsheets will have been designed with maintenance in mind. One client recently asked to remove the bolding from phone numbers in an auto-generated address book. The original consultant was no longer available but removing the bolding was as simple as removing the bolding from a cell reading Phone Number on a hidden sheet. We can easily provide support because our solutions are easy to support.
Is it cheaper to use a freelancer than a premium Excel consultancy?
All things being equal, a freelancing site can provide a cheaper service than an Excel consultancy and some of the freelancers will be able to offer the same level of service as our consultants. A specialist Excel consultancy is far more selective than a freelancing site and we know how much our consultants time is worth. At a crude level, you are paying extra to ensure your consultant is up to the job.
Buying an Excel spreadsheet should be seen as akin to buying shirts. If the cheaper ones keep falling apart then you might be better off investing in a premium brand. However, there is always the possibility that the cheap shirt survives a decade of heavy use.
Just like a shirt, a spreadsheet built to a minimum spec is likely to be the cheapest option but that might limit how much you want to use it. Within a business, the cost of the lost opportunity often dwarfs the cost of a more considered solution.