In today’s business landscape, particularly Financial Services, Energy Trading, and Insurance, volatility has become the norm, and changing business requirements, a constant challenge.
Business users rely heavily on Excel to manage their mission-critical models and data in an agile way. However, these Excel workbooks become increasingly complex, leading to challenges with scalability, access to accurate data, and operational risk. One solution often considered is rewriting the spreadsheet in Python, but this comes with its own set of drawbacks.
Part two of this series reflects on the business users’ perspectives of both approaches. For a business perspective, please see our previous post, which you can find here:
Using Schematiq instead of re-writing an Excel model into Python offers several benefits for business users, including:
Increased agility and time-to-market: Excel models built with Schematiq are transparent to end-users putting business users in control making it easier for them to manage and update the model without depending on a team of Python developers. This means they can respond to changing business requirements and market conditions more quickly and efficiently. They can also test with different scenarios and amend the model, logic and associated data sources as needed to optimise their results.
Improved collaboration and reduced operational risk: Schematiq enables version-controlled models and functions to be used by multiple users simultaneously. This makes it easier for teams to collaborate, sharing trusted, proven, functions and IP created by the business, shared in a controlled way across the organisation. Ensuring that everyone is using the same version of the model and that there are no conflicts or errors due to versioning or data issues materially reduces operational risk.
Autonomy and Self-service: Python, while popular and versatile, still requires users to have programming knowledge. This means that non-technical users may struggle to work with a spreadsheet rewritten in Python. Schematiq self-learning approach means that users of all skill levels can quickly become proficient and start using it to improve their models
Using Schematiq can provide significant benefits for end-users and businesses. Our clients report increased flexibility, transparency, collaboration, and efficiency together with reduced costs and improved user experience. Excel models can be easily maintained and updated, allowing businesses to respond quickly to changing market conditions and get to better outcomes, faster.