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Enterprise Spreadsheet ManagementProduct Type: Market Research ReportPublished by: Bloor Research Published: June 2007 Product Code: R3467-16 Description Spreadsheets represent one of the most popular applications on the planet. This is because they are the reporting and analysis tool of choice for many professionals and because they support collaboration and information sharing. Moreover, this is not going to change, not just in terms of existing business people but, as our children are being taught how to use spreadsheets in school, this popularity is likely to continue for many years to come: spreadsheets are ubiquitous and will remain so. However, no matter the popularity of spreadsheets, they also, used improperly or incorrectly, or without sufficient control, pose a greater threat to your business than almost anything you can imagine. They can give rise to compliance issues because changes to data are not audited. They can also be used to aid and abet fraud, because security is not applied (typically) to conventional spreadsheets and, again, because there is no control over the ability to change data values (and bearing in mind that most fraud is carried out by authorised personnel). Further, it is easy to make mistakes in spreadsheets (for example, by entering an incorrect formula) that can mislead decision makers, the results of which can be very expensive. . HM Customs & Excise in its “Methodology for the Audit of Spreadsheet Models” says that “the complexity and functionality of spreadsheets has reached levels of sophistication that few could have imagined… the consequent threat posed to businesses by such powerful ‘end user’ applications, mainly in the hands of untrained users, is immense”. A major cause of these problems is that spreadsheets are not treated as an enterprise resource. For example, although there are (limited) security and auditing facilities in Microsoft Excel, these are not usually enforced. Indeed, because many users are self-taught they will not be aware that such facilities even exist. In the main, this is because spreadsheets are not perceived to be an IT resource but are seen to lie within the business domain. As a result, corporate security standards are not implemented for spreadsheets. On the other hand, the business is not aware of the potential dangers that the uncontrolled use of spreadsheets can cause. A major focus of this report is therefore to make business users aware of these dangers so that they can push the task of managing spreadsheets into the hands of the IT department. In particular, it discusses the need for spreadsheet management, precisely in order to prevent, or at least minimise, the issues just mentioned. Having established the need for spreadsheet management solutions, this report goes on to discuss the various types of solution that are available, which range from complete control (that is, you absolutely prevent people from doing what you don’t want them to) to complete monitoring with no control (that is, you monitor all changes but do not actively prevent any of them—rather like closed circuit TV). In addition, there are tools that are specifically designed to help you find errors within spreadsheets. We will discuss the relative merits of these different approaches and when each of these might be most suitable (which will depend upon how spreadsheets are used and for what purpose). Further, we will compare and evaluate the various products that exist within each of these sectors. When we first published our white paper ‘Managing Spreadsheets’ in 2005 the solutions available on the market were few and far between and most of them were immature. While new products continue to emerge there is now a core set of well-established vendors with significant user bases. This is why we now feel that the time has come to look in detail at the products serving the enterprise spreadsheet management market. Moreover, Ventana Research has conducted research within this area and estimates that while the total market for enterprise spreadsheet management tools was $15m in 2006 it expects this to grow to some $500m within five years. . The time has therefore arrived to look at the vendors in this market in some detail. In addition, it is worth bearing in mind that spreadsheets take an inordinately long time to produce. This is typically caused by the varying skill sets of the spreadsheet users but even the expert spreadsheet craftsman tends to spend too much time in tedious and repetitive tasks such as formula copying, formatting, workbook assembly, and distribution.From a business perspective, therefore, it would be useful if spreadsheet management solutions were to be able to provide automated facilities that could alleviate this repetition—with all the productivity gains that that implies. As it happens, there are a couple of vendors that offer automation for the development of spreadsheet applications (such as consolidation, sales reporting or budgeting and planning) as well as tool vendors within the conventional management category that provide facilities to speed up the development of spreadsheets. We will also consider the capabilities provided by all of these suppliers. Finally, one point that we must make is that there is an inevitable congruity between the concept of spreadsheets on the one hand and Microsoft Excel on the other. Excel is, after all, the epitome of a spreadsheet application, and it is by far the most widely used. In general, where Excel is referred to in this paper it can be taken as a synonym for spreadsheet unless specifically stated otherwise. We will, however, discuss (briefly) the uses of spreadsheets from other vendors. Table of Contents
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