I blogged only a little while ago on the danger of excel in data integration and now a for-instance pops up in finextra: Barclays claims to have discovered that 179 contracts were accidently included in the Lehman Brothers purchase due to ... an error related to excel. To be fair, this wasn't exactly a data integration example. However, it does show how excel (and all the other office productivity tools the modern enterprise relies on) bypass the normal checks and controls we put in place for our 'proper' applications. To quote the article:
the associate was unaware that the original document – which contained 24,000 individual cells, included some rows marked with an 'n' to signify those assets that Barclays would not be taking onJust to restate what I said last time:
the data may well be out of date or simply wrong with the obvious implications on decisions (and risk measurement and compliance!!). The reason the data will be out of date is obvious: in many cases there is no easy mechanism to ensure it is up to date and there is no easy mechanism to flag the problem when it is.
Clearly, excel is here to stay for a very good reason - it is a powerful and effective tool which users like. However, we should remember to incorporate it within any data governance strategy. Moreover, the problems caused by excel today should be fair warning to any organisation considering an uncontrolled dive into mashup style opportunistic applications which also provide powerful capabilities married to the potential for great mix-ups.
Ronan
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Mr.Bradly, I support your view.Though these application are used for office automation, some minimal care has to be taken by the users, by doing few checks relating to the data entered and computed.The companies such as Micro Soft should go for an proper compilation checks before releasing any new versions.