Related papers: Reducing the Risk of Spreadsheet Usage - a Case St…
Amongst the large number of write-and-throw-away spreadsheets developed for one-time use there is a rather neglected proportion of spreadsheets that are huge, periodically used, and submitted to regular update-cycles like any conventionally…
We developed an internet-based questionnaire on spreadsheet use that we administered to a large number of users in several companies and organizations to document how spreadsheets are currently being developed and used in business. In this…
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…
Spreadsheet engineering adapts the lessons of software engineering to spreadsheets, providing eight principles as a framework for organizing spreadsheet programming recommendations. Spreadsheets raise issues inadequately addressed by…
While scientists increasingly recognize the importance of metadata in describing their data, spreadsheets remain the preferred tool for supplying this information despite their limitations in ensuring compliance and quality. Various tools…
Research on formulae production in spreadsheets has established the practice as high risk yet unrecognised as such by industry. There are numerous software applications that are designed to audit formulae and find errors. However these are…
Spreadsheets often need changing in ways made tedious and risky by Excel. For example: simultaneously altering many tables' size, orientation, and position; inserting cross-tabulations; moving data between sheets; splitting and merging…
End User Computing carries significant risks if not well controlled. This paper is a case study of the introduction of an updated End User Computing policy at the Wesleyan Assurance Society. The paper outlines the plan and identifies…
Spreadsheets offer a supremely successful democratisation platform, placing the manipulation and presentation of numbers within the grasp of users that have little or no mathematical expertise or IT experience. What appears to be almost…
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…
The SSMI methodology was developed using concepts from Computer Science, Software Engineering and Information Systems and has been taught to undergraduate and MBA students and in Executive training seminars. In this paper, we describe the…
The wealth of functionality in the Excel software package means it can go beyond use as a static evaluator of predefined cell formulae, to be used actively in manipulating and transforming data. Due to human error it is impossible to ensure…
Spreadsheet computing is one of the more popular computing methodologies in today's modern society. The spreadsheet application's ease of use and usefulness has enabled non-programmers to perform programming-like tasks in a familiar setting…
Modern ERP systems contain flexible report generators but the tendency exists for users to export data to spreadsheets for manipulation, reporting and decision making. A purported reason for this is that some users are more familiar with…
Various techniques for developing spreadsheet models greatly improve the chance that the end result will not contain basic mechanical errors. However, for every discipline in which a given technique is useful, there is likely to be another…
Modern spreadsheet systems can be used to implement complex spreadsheet applications including data sheets, customized user forms and executable procedures written in a scripting language. These applications are often developed by…
One of the most important assets of any company is being able to easily access information on itself and on its business. In this line, it has been observed that this important information is often stored in one of the millions of…
Spreadsheets are used to develop application software that is distributed to users. Unfortunately, the users often have the ability to change the programming statements ("source code") of the spreadsheet application. This causes a host of…
Very little is known about the process by which end-user developers detect and correct spreadsheet errors. Any research pertaining to the development of spreadsheet testing methodologies or auditing tools would benefit from information on…
We briefly review the well-known risks, weaknesses and limitations of spreadsheets and then introduce some more. We review and slightly extend our previous work on the importance and criticality of spreadsheets in the City of London,…