by Roh Krishnan | Product Strategy

When I was first tasked with introducing Boardwalk Velocity to the market, the product immediately reminded me of GitHub. Both solutions fundamentally serve the same core purpose—managing data in a collaborative, version-controlled environment.

As a software engineer by training, I’ve been using GitHub since I started my professional journey. It’s the go-to platform for teams looking to collaborate on code. What truly sets GitHub apart is the way it enables you to work: you can “branch” a master codebase—the one running in production—into your own personal environment. That’s a big deal because as a junior engineer, it allowed me to experiment with production-level code without risking the entire system. Once my changes were tested, I could merge them back into the master branch, typically after a senior engineer reviewed everything. GitHub itself can do a lot more, and it’s all geared toward one primary goal: efficient code and data management.

During my time as a software or solutions engineer at companies like Barracuda Networks, Twitter, and Salesforce, another company—Boardwalktech—took those same data management principles and applied them to Excel spreadsheets.

So, once I joined Boardwalktech, I saw a clear analogy that I knew would resonate: Boardwalk Velocity is the GitHub for spreadsheets. When I explained this to my software-savvy friends, their reaction was always one of amazement. After all, we can’t imagine a world without GitHub for code collaboration—why should spreadsheets be any different?

Collaboration Without Headaches

GitHub enables multiple people to work on the same codebase simultaneously. Before GitHub, it was difficult—often downright tedious—for two engineers to collaborate on a single code file. Boardwalk Velocity does the same thing for spreadsheets, providing that same level of streamlined collaboration.

We started using Boardwalk Velocity internally for our own spreadsheet management, and that’s when I truly realized how transformative this technology is. While GitHub tracks changes at the character level in code, Boardwalk Velocity tracks changes at the cell level in Excel.

Introducing the ‘Cuboid’

Unlike typical spreadsheet collaboration tools that operate on the file level (like Google Sheets or O365), Boardwalk Velocity is built on an innovation we call the “Cuboid.” The Cuboid is essentially a cell-level database. This foundational difference drives unparalleled collaboration because each cell is managed independently, just like lines of code in GitHub. It felt almost too good to be true—an intuitive solution that handled version control and collaboration for Excel just as smoothly as GitHub does for code.

If you rely on Excel (and most enterprise users do), it’s easy to see how vital this is. By not using Boardwalk Velocity, you end up creating manual processes that slow you down and increase the likelihood of human error.

Branching and Merging Made Simple

If you think about GitHub’s basic branching and merging, the concept behind Boardwalk Velocity is similar. We’ve simply shifted the focus to spreadsheets. Your job isn’t to worry about file management; it’s to update cells, work with your team, and keep track of evolving data—whether that involves weekly sales figures, quarterly revenue targets, or promotion planning. Our job is to handle the complexity behind the scenes, ensuring you can collaborate effortlessly in Excel.

Getting started with Boardwalk Velocity is straightforward: just download it from our website. Setup instructions will guide you on how to integrate it into Excel. From there, the process is simple. We call the branching function “Refresh” and the merging function “Submit.” Those two actions take care of version control in your spreadsheets, so you can focus on the actual work rather than juggling multiple versions and email threads.

Ready to supercharge your Excel workflow?
Head over to the Boardwalk Velocity website, give it a try, and let me know if you have any questions. Let’s take your Excel collaboration to the next level—together!