Audit

Modern business needs an audit trail of the data that lead to significant financial decisions being made especially with the advent of MIFID II. Excel based EUC has always been difficult to audit, typically achieved through saving the representative spreadsheet or tying the application to a back-end database.

The PersisTables toolkit provides tools that can add auditing to existing spreadsheet in a non-intrusive way. Input and output data can be captured in a versioned history of changes without altering the primary behaviour of the application.

Sharing

Sharing Excel data is a challenge. Data tends to accumulate in a single workbook while the functionality accretes around it. Modern version of Excel allow spreadsheets to be used simultaneously by multiple users but this creates the problem of merging results, capturing functional changes and often ends up with the creation of multiple copies of a key spreadsheet with no one knowing which is the golden source.

Loading PersisTable data captured from other spreadsheets is easy to do; its data management tools allows data  to be categorised for easy reference. This means that data entered into one spreadsheet cen be saved and then automatically loaded in another reducing the need for dual keying data and the reconciliation problems associated with data duplication.

Testing

Excel spreadsheets are notoriously difficult to test. This can lead to major problems associated with overwritten formulae and data overflowing ranges which are hard to detect and which can lead to major financial loss.

As PersisTables provides tools to snapshot input and output data, it can capture a range of test scenarios very easily. If the input data is subsequently reloaded into the spreadsheet and the spreadhseet recalculated then the outputs can be compared against previous test runs to demonstrate no change in behaviour. If a new set of inputs identify a bug that needs to be corrected, then those inputs can be simply appended to the test set to ensure future regression covers the problem.

Simplify

The accumulation of data and functionality in a single spreadsheet makes it fragile and liable to unexpected failure.

By sepearting data from function, PersisTables allows the division and simplification of complex spreadsheets, creating more robust applications and supporting a workflow approach that eliminates process bottlenecks.

Integrate

Business and Technology teams often work against each other, IT projects are slow to deliver and inflexible while business EUC is fragile and error prone.

Using PersisTables data technology it is possible to get the best of both worlds; IT can handle the stable, well defined elements of the business process, while sharing the data with business EUC for the more innovative prototyping that allows a business to keep ahead of the competition.

Try for Free

PersisTables is an Excel addin that provides powerful data management tools that can be used directly by the end user. Using just Excel worksheet formulae, data of arbitrary complexity can be stored, reloaded, shared with others and manipulated directly within the sheet with no recourse to technology resources. Its flexible architecture allows ‘plug-in’ components to be developed allowing integration with in house technology data stores and industry standard databases and document stores.

Download a trial version of PersisTables to find out for yourself how easily you can boost productivity and improve your ability to share and analyse your key business data .