Related papers: Impact of Errors in Operational Spreadsheets
The power of mobile devices has increased dramatically in the last few years. These devices are becoming more sophisticated allowing users to accomplish a wide variety of tasks while on the move. The increasingly mobile nature of business…
Spreadsheets provide many of the key links between information systems, closing the gap between business needs and the capability of central systems. Recent regulations have brought these vulnerable parts of information supply chains into…
Most organizations today use spreadsheets in some form or another to support critical business processes. However the financial resources, and developmental rigor dedicated to them are often minor in comparison to other enterprise…
Spreadsheet technology is a cornerstone of IT systems in most organisations. It is often the glue that binds more structured transaction-based systems together. Financial operations are a case in point where spreadsheets fill the gaps left…
The use of spreadsheets is widespread. Be it in business, finance, engineering or other areas, spreadsheets are created for their flexibility and ease to quickly model a problem. Very often they evolve from simple prototypes to…
The humble spreadsheet is the most widely used data storage, manipulation and modelling tool. Its ubiquity over the past 30 years has seen its successful application in every area of life. Surprisingly the spreadsheet has remained…
We investigate the expressive power of spreadsheets. We consider spreadsheets which contain only formulas, and assume that they are small templates, which can be filled to a larger area of the grid to process input data of variable size.…
Spreadsheets in financial markets are frequently used as database, calculator and reporting application combined. This paper describes an alternative approach in which spreadsheet design and database technology have been brought together in…
There is no denying that spreadsheets have become critical for all operational processes including financial reporting, budgeting, forecasting, and analysis. Microsoft Excel has essentially become a scratch pad and a data browser that can…
Just like other software, spreadsheets can contain significant faults. Static analysis is an accepted and well-established technique in software engineering known for its capability to discover faults. In recent years, a growing number of…
Developing an error-free spreadsheet has been a problem since the beginning of end-user computing. In this paper, we present a methodology that separates the modeling from the implementation. Using proven techniques from Information Systems…
A number of automated techniques and tools were proposed in the research literature over the years which aim to support the spreadsheet developer in the process of testing and debugging a faulty spreadsheet. One underlying assumption of…
In this paper we consider human factors and their impact on spreadsheet development in strategic decision-making. This paper brings forward research from many disciplines both directly related to spreadsheets and a broader spectrum from…
Microsoft Excel is the most ubiquitous analytical tool ever built. Companies around the world leverage it for its power, flexibility and ease of use. However, spreadsheets are manually intensive and prone to error, making it difficult for…
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has finally forced corporations to examine the validity of their spreadsheets. They are beginning to understand the spreadsheet error literature, including what it tells them about the need for comprehensive…
In this paper, we report some on-going focused research, but are further keen to set it in the context of a proposed bigger picture, as follows. There is a certain depressing pattern about the attitude of industry to spreadsheet error…
Recent research has highlighted the high incidence of errors in spreadsheet models used in industry. In an attempt to reduce the incidence of such errors, a teaching approach has been devised which aids students to reduce their likelihood…
Spreadsheets are widely used in industry, because they are flexible and easy to use. Often, they are even used for business-critical applications. It is however difficult for spreadsheet users to correctly assess the maintainability of…
We present a pragmatic method for management of risks that arise due to spreadsheet use in large organizations. We combine peer-review, tool-assisted evaluation and other pre-existing approaches into a single organization-wide approach that…
This paper presents the authors recommended practices for spreadsheet testing. Documented spreadsheet error rates are unacceptable in corporations today. Although improvements are needed throughout the systems development life cycle,…