It is nearly 40 years since Microsoft revolutionised business modelling with the introduction of Excel. Since then, just about every human organisation has adopted Excel as it’s go-to modelling platform. So much so that we now have global financial institutions reliant upon Excel for their pricing, risk modelling and service provision.
But how do you know if Excel has moved from helping your business to hindering it. A simple way to find out is think about the 10 points below and ask yourself how much are these issues cause for concern.
Human error via manual entry
Excel version control
Issues debugging
Long computation/processing times
Extensive development time
Scalability issues
Loss of agility within Excel
The need to integrate Excel with other system
Data security
Fears over data governance
The solution is likely simpler than you think. We at Schematiq believe there really are only four possible strategies that an organisation in this position can take:
Ban it; prohibit the usage of Excel for medium term models. This is not really practical. Excel exists and is popular and it services a need. It is very hard to create modelling groups that are flexible and available enough to meet a business’s needs.
Ignore it; bury your head in the sand and hope it goes away. This is fine for a small business with limited operational risk. For a larger business this is too short-termist. Excel quickly becomes a constraint on agility and represents a significant operational risk. Many organisations have ended up with audit findings against them in this area.
Monitor it; Keep an eye on your Excel estate through monitoring software. Launch periodic projects to re-platform areas of significant operational risk into custom solutions (which will then often represent a constraint).
Solve it; Use Schematiq to remove the downsides of Excel.
The good news is Schematiq can easily help you solve all these problems without making your organisation move away from its beloved Excel, but rather securely holding all the data outside of Excel removing governance and control concerns while speeding up processing times.
Want to learn more – request a 15 minute introductory call today by contacting hello@schematiq.com.