What a spreadsheet cannot do
- Say who owns a row and what they must do next.
- Record what changed, when and by whom.
- Prevent two people overwriting each other.
- Trigger anything when a value changes.
- Enforce that a required field is actually filled.
The real breaking point
It is not size. Plenty of businesses run five hundred rows comfortably. It is concurrency and consequence: the moment two people edit and the moment a change is supposed to cause something, the spreadsheet becomes a report of a process nobody is actually running.
Where spreadsheets remain excellent
Modelling, one-off analysis, scenario comparison and quick math. Keep them for thinking. Stop using them for running.