Controlling Excel Chaos With Business Intelligence

Controlling Excel Chaos With Business Intelligence A White Paper by Diane Sklar Diane Sklar is currently a technical director of WebFOCUS Product Marketing. She writes and speaks about many aspects of WebFOCUS functionality and trains sales and product support in the most recently introduced technologies. Diane has been responsible for the development of many aspects of WebFOCUS functionality since the product was first launched in 1995. Diane began working for Information Builders in Los Angeles Professional Services where she developed applications, managed projects, and was Branch Consulting Manager. Since transferring to the New York Corporate office in 1992, Diane has managed products in both the WebFOCUS and iWay lines of business. Before coming to Information Builders, Diane worked in the IT division of Peat Marwick Mitchell and in the consulting practice of Price Waterhouse. She has a Masters of Business Administration from New York University. Table of Contents 1 2 2 3 4 9 4 4 5 7 9 11 11 12 12 15 Executive Summary The Excel Challenge Manual Labor Begets Errors On the Spreadsheet Audit Trail Excel Sourcebooks There Is a Solution A Spreadsheet in Every Mailbox The Corporate Excel Sourcebook Deliver Advanced Functionality Answering the Ad Hoc Question Connect Directly to the Data Source Excel and the Enterprise Servicing the Non-Expert Excel User Conclusion Executive Summary Business analysts develop Excel spreadsheets to assist with the day-to-day operational decisions their jobs demand. Pleased with the autonomy and sophisticated analysis that Excel supports, they share these innovations with colleagues who modify spreadsheet logic and manually tack on data from their own information silos. Over time, rogue spreadsheets with data from dubious sources are propagated throughout the organization. Executives find themselves making decisions based on untraceable, questionable data. The enterprise is at a loss to audit these numbers for themselves and for regulatory agencies. Meanwhile, the IT division has complete, auditable, and backed-up operational system data that is untapped by the Excel user community. IT executives are frustrated by the rampant spread of unreliable information and their inability to leverage corporate data stores. How can your organization satisfy the business users’ demands to work within their preferred format – the Excel framework – while also giving them access to all enterprise data sources and maintaining data integrity? This paper* first outlines the vulnerabilities of Excel, and explores strategies to counteract these shortfalls. It then describes push solutions that serve up corporate data from centralized Excel sourcebooks and add-on desktop functionality that lets expert Excel users pull data directly from corporate data sources. And finally, it proposes structured ad hoc applications that are flexible and agile in answering the impromptu questions of non-expert Excel users. All of these strategies buttress Excel’s weaknesses as an enterprise business analysis tool while enabling users to continue to operate in their preferred analysis environment. * This paper was updated in August 2007 to include information about the new WebFOCUS Quick Data feature. Details of this feature are highlighted on pages 11 and 12. 1 Information Builders The Excel Challenge Spreadsheets were the standard model for doing financial analysis long before enterprises automated accounting and finance functions. When Microsoft launched Excel, it mimicked the spreadsheet layout and made the business analysts’ transition from paper to computer a seamless one. Moreover, the easy-to-use, point-and-click interface running on the Windows platform gave Excel a market-share victory over competitors like Lotus and VisiCalc, and has expanded its use far beyond the financial realm. Manual Labor Begets Errors Excel was designed for the individual analyst working alone on a computer with a limited amount of data. The original Excel model had a business analyst typing a small subset of corporate data into a spreadsheet, cell by cell, and then manually manipulating that data to solve a business problem. But manual data entry is expensive, time consuming, and error prone. Cell-by-cell data entry leads to simple mechanical errors such as mistyping a number or pointing to the wrong cell. Graver errors can also occur when the analyst makes mistakes in formulas because of bad keystrokes or bad logic. When data is available in an existing spreadsheet, it can be cut and pasted via the clipboard or merged using Excel functionality. This works smoothly when the source and target ranges are formatted identically. But when they are not identical, data and formulas can inadvertently be corrupted. Alternatively, ranges of data from an external Excel workbook can be referenced in place. The effectiveness of this technique is dependent on the source file remaining unchanged. Maintenance to spreadsheets chained in this way can be horrendous when there is no centralized change-management policy. Ideally, data from corporate stores should be transferable directly to Excel spreadsheets, thereby ensuring that all business analysts start their spreadsheet ventures with the one true version of enterprise data. But Microsoft’s vision of interoperability has remained focused on Excel and other Microsoft desktop products. Until recently, outside connections were only established through ODBC or DDE connections. Beyond these options, users had to transform data to the text-based CSV format and stage it on the Windows platform. Corporate Data Report Output Manual Data/ Formula Entry Styled Aggregated Spreadsheet Figure 1: Manual spreadsheet generation is a breeding ground for errors. 2 Controlling Excel Chaos With Business Intelligence On the Spreadsheet Audit Trail For many companies Excel has grown beyond a small-scale analysis tool. It is now the main vehicle for financial analysis in mission-critical departments, pushing Excel functionality beyond its original intent. Excel has no built-in mechanism for separating the presentation, calculation, analysis, and storage layers of an application. The onus of solid spreadsheet design is still left to the spreadsheet developer. Of course, skill levels in Excel and in programming methodology vary widely among analysts. In non-IT departments untrained spreadsheet programmers can apply resource-intensive calculations at the wrong level, creating a performance bottleneck. Rigorous testing with sufficiently varied data samples is rarely done at the departmental level. These are just some examples of possible fallout from not applying IT methodology to the spreadsheet community. Accurate and traceable financial information is critical to making sound business decisions that move the enterprise forward. Auditable information is required outside the organization as well. The 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires disclosure of internal controls over financial reporting in annual reports. Furthermore, spreadsheet errors can lead to expensive and embarrassing problems. The European Spreadsheet Risk Interest Group analyzes and quantifies the cost of spreadsheet errors worldwide. In one six-month period, they reported various situations, including: I A public auditor’s office in Minneapolis mistakenly changed the percentage in unreserved fund balances; an analyst then set up the formula for the column in the spreadsheet, dividing the difference between 2003 and 2004 balances by the 2004 total, instead of the 2003 figure I A Housing and Urban Development (HUD) audit revealed that a local housing authority had to pay over $200,000 to cover expenses incurred when the authority overpaid some landlords due to a data-entry error I In Nevada, a 2006 municipal budget was developed from a copy of the city’s 2005 budgeting spreadsheet; in late 2005, a problem was revealed causing a $5 million deficit in the water and sewer fund; while fixing the problem with the water and sewer budget, other errors were uncovered and fixed I A well-known medical and consumer imaging company had to amend its third-quarter loss by $9 million, announcing that the adjustment was needed because too many zeros were added to an employee’s accrued severance on a spreadsheet; the company’s CFO characterized the situation as “an internal control deficiency” True, robust error protection and auditing for Excel is generally left to third-party products. The flourishing market of add-on tools bears witness to Excel’s weakness in this area. Add-on tools auditing becomes another training and standardization dilemma. Once again the enterprise is dependent on the skill, prudence, and discipline of the individual analyst to properly deploy audit tools. Despite these problems, usage of Excel is not diminishing. It is still the undisputed giant among business analysis tools. It can be found on every desktop in the enterprise. Its cost per seat is negligible, keeping it the first choice for on-going enterprise application needs. How can the organization protect itself from the rampant spread of uncontrolled and unsanctioned numbers in Excel spreadsheets? 3 Information Builders Excel Sourcebooks Since Excel usage shows no sign of waning, IT’s best approach is to eliminate the resourceintensive, error-prone data entry process in traditional Excel deployment. When necessary, IT can also provide links to extract relevant transaction-level data. A comprehensive study of all Excel user requirements can feed the design of a set of master Excel workbooks that supply content to all Excel users. Workbook structure should be flexible, allowing users to exploit any subset of workbooks, worksheets, or cell ranges. Ideally, data should be delivered to these master workbooks already summarized and styled. It should also be formatted for the specific version of Excel that users have on their desktops. Complex formulas should be pre-set to avoid errors. Excel structures that are difficult to develop, such as graphs and PivotTables, should be delivered analysis-ready. Users will have different data latency requirements as well. Some workbooks may need to be refreshed quarterly, other workbooks may require a monthly, weekly, daily, or hourly feed. There Is a Solution WebFOCUS, Information Builders’ business intelligence (BI) platform, generates Excel spreadsheets across all generations of Excel. This includes XML-based formats with comprehensive Excel functionality as well as binary formats that optimize transfer speed. All WebFOCUS Excel spreadsheets have their data summarized and formatted as a complete spreadsheet on the WebFOCUS Reporting Server. The Reporting Server, typically located on the same platform as the target data, summarizes data as per the request, minimizing the volume of data transmitted and formatted on the desktop. By the time the spreadsheet arrives on the user’s desktop it is ready to go, without wait-time for additional formatting. Delivery of corporate spreadsheet data to Excel users can be accomplished through several automated distribution strategies. For each distribution scenario, WebFOCUS ReportCaster schedules jobs and extracts data from known, auditable corporate sources. It makes data available at any interval, from every n years to every n minutes. The resulting extract can be formatted in several ways: I As Excel spreadsheets, which are pushed to a distribution list of Excel users via e-mail I As a Corporate Excel Sourcebook(s) on a central server – users connect to the corporate Excel sourcebook and pull relevant data into their own Excel workbooks by referencing named ranges of cells I As database extracts on a central server with a parameter-driven user interface; users supply parameter values that determine all content and stylistic characteristics for a target spreadsheet to answer an ad hoc question A Spreadsheet in Every Mailbox When spreadsheet contents and formats are uniform across a large population of users, a ReportCaster job can e-mail Excel spreadsheets to a distribution list of user addresses. The job is programmed once and tested rigorously by IT professional staff familiar with the corporate files. The job is run once and output is collected for all interested parties. 4 Controlling Excel Chaos With Business Intelligence E-mails with spreadsheet attachments are created for all entries on the distribution list. The distribution list can be developed manually or derived from Microsoft Active Directory or an LDAP directory. Each recipient on the distribution list can receive the entire report. Or, if the report contents are private, the report can be burst so that recipients receive content only for the sort group(s) relevant to them. For example, a company-wide profit and loss statement can be burst by cost center so that managers receive the statements only for their own cost centers. France Corporate Directory (LDAP, Active Directory) Spain Spreadsheet Distribution Schedule UK E-mail Global Excel Spreadsheet Brazil Figure 2: Bursting Excel spreadsheets saves system resources by running a job once for all users, and ensures privacy by distributing only the appropriate sections to each user. The Corporate Excel Sourcebook Sometimes a spreadsheet’s content and format are highly customized and frequently change. In such an environment, a suitable strategy is to provide foundation spreadsheet data in a generic workbook or Corporate Excel Sourcebook. This workbook standardizes detail, summary, and calculated amounts. It is created and stored on a universally accessible server by a ReportCaster job that refreshes it as often as necessary. Organization of WebFOCUS Corporate Excel Sourcebooks is extremely flexible. Data can be structured on a single worksheet or multiple worksheets. If there are multiple worksheets, all sheets can have an identical format but different ranges of data. Using the profit and loss statement example, a workbook could be organized with one sheet per cost center. 5 Information Builders Another multiple worksheet solution is to consolidate unrelated reports in a single workbook. For example, one worksheet might contain inventory reports, the next sheet might contain human resources reports, and so on. No connection between the worksheets is necessary. To populate personal spreadsheets, users connect to the central server and reference the central workbook in their local spreadsheets. References can pluck data from the entire workbook, worksheet, or from a range of cells within a report. To facilitate selective data gathering, the Corporate Excel Sourcebook can be designed with named cell ranges. Named ranges are put in place when the WebFOCUS Excel job is set up. They shield users from needing to change their personal spreadsheets when report size and position change in the Corporate Excel Source-book. Named ranges can be set up for a sheet, report, column, row, or any rectangle of cells. With Corporate Excel Sourcebooks, users each take exactly the data they want, no more and no less. They can then style and manipulate that data in any way they please and the audit trail to controlled corporate data is preserved. Corporate Data Employees Orders Purchasing Range A 1 A 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 B B C C D D E E F F 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Customers Insurance Cost Range Sales Payroll Sheet Inventory Figure 3: A Corporate Excel Sourcebook contains corporate Excel data that all enterprise users can link to with their own spreadsheets. 6 Controlling Excel Chaos With Business Intelligence Deliver Advanced Functionality It is worth discussing the scope and variety of pre-formatted Excel features supported by WebFOCUS. Maximum automated data manipulation means minimum chance for human error. WebFOCUS supports all Excel functionality, either directly or through the use of spreadsheet templates. The specific mix of Excel capabilities pre-set by WebFOCUS extract and distribution jobs is limited only by the standard versions of Excel in use. All features of every Excel release are supported. The following is a summary of stylistic and analytic features available. Summary Lines WebFOCUS generates report headings and footings, page headings and footings, and recap lines on sort breaks, all of which can have a combination of text and numeric totals. Worksheet and workbook names can also be automatically generated. Styling and Conditional Styling WebFOCUS controls the font family, size, color, and style for each and every element of a spreadsheet. Summary lines, column titles, column content, etc. can be styled separately. Conditional styling is also supported so that data meeting defined business criteria is highlighted by style or color. Drill Down Hypertext links to other spreadsheets, images, or HTML pages can be automatically embedded in distributed Excel output. Links can be positioned in summary lines or within the data of the report. Formulas and Calculation Logic Complex formulas can be implemented in the WebFOCUS extract job and passed to Excel. The benefit is that these complex calculations are written and tested centrally by IT professionals familiar with corporate data sources and with structured programming practices. The WebFOCUS self-documenting code becomes the audit trail for Sarbanes Oxley and other compliance regulations. Even relatively simple calculations such as growth rate and profitability can be incorrect when factors are reversed. Consider the multiplicity of factors in some calculations typically implemented in spreadsheets. In analyzing pay grades for example, human resources departments often rate performance based on manager performance evaluation, absenteeism, years of service, current salary within pay grade, and corporate guidelines for pay increases. If these formulas are incorrectly calculated, legal issues could arise. Insurance companies might base profitability projections for corporate health insurance contracts on rates charged, historic dollar amount of claims, employee population age, and numbers of dependents. All factors must be weighted and if a new factor is introduced, all weights must be recalculated. 7 Information Builders Calculating the cost of goods sold and the value of inventory on hand can also involve an array of factors. Inventory valuations typically involve a range of prices and costs for raw material, labor, shipping, etc. at different points in time, periodic production volumes, and LIFO or FIFO assumptions about the rotation of goods. A spreadsheet capturing these rules would quickly become a dangerous breeding ground for error. The potential for error is dramatically reduced when such calculations are done by a single, thoroughly tested and auditable module with access to the correct data sources. Pre-calculated formulas Formatted headings and footings Drill down to other reports, spreadsheets, or graphs Conditional styling when sales are greater than $100k Figure 4: A typical WebFOCUS Excel spreadsheet has predefined calculations, styling, and drill-downs. PivotTables PivotTables make it possible to reveal trends in a data sample by sorting, filtering, adding key elements, and charting. Despite a built-in Excel PivotTable Wizard, there are pitfalls to developing PivotTables. While most report consumers manipulate PivotTables effectively, far fewer users can readily produce sophisticated, styled PivotTables. With WebFOCUS, PivotTables can be developed by IT professionals and built into the extract job. WebFOCUS PivotTable developers work in a graphical user interface, building the initial view of the table as well as the lists of cached and page control fields. 8 Controlling Excel Chaos With Business Intelligence Figure 5: Most Excel users can manipulate PivotTables, but far fewer can design them. Templates For all spreadsheet functionality not mentioned above, such as print preview or graphing, WebFOCUS can implement Excel features by leveraging templates. Undoubtedly, every organization has spreadsheets that represent a great deal of effort in development of macros. If these macros have been tested and certified, they can be leveraged in place without rewriting by applying WebFOCUS formatted data through templates. Templates are skeleton workbooks containing any Excel functionality. During spreadsheet creation, the WebFOCUS Reporting Server locates the template, merges data into a designated sheet, and saves the results to a separate workbook file. The final spreadsheet has corporate data inserted into a pre-existing user approved format. Templates not only leverage all existing functionality of Excel, they also position WebFOCUS to leverage future functionality that Microsoft will add to Excel. 9 Information Builders x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xx xxxx Corporate Data Excel Templates WebFOCUS 14% 12% 5% 30% 25% Populated Spreadsheets Figure 6: WebFOCUS merges an Excel layout (template) with corporate data to provide the exact formatting and data manipulation required. Figure 7: An Excel template before and after it is populated with data by WebFOCUS. 10 Controlling Excel Chaos With Business Intelligence Answering the Ad Hoc Question There will always be a need for new spreadsheets to address the latest business challenge. Latebreaking situations that require new subsets of data can be tackled with an interactive ad hoc reporting system by empowering users to connect directly to staged or operational corporate data sources. A complete corporate Excel solution needs a methodology for expert Excel users to connect directly from the Excel environment to corporate data sources and also a power spreadsheet building application for non-expert Excel users. Connect Directly to the Data Source In most enterprises, IT has already invested resources in creating a protected and scrubbed warehouse of summarized data, such as financial results. One way to resolve the problem of spreading unreliable, non-auditable data is to give Excel users direct access to the organization’s sanctioned warehouse.. By connecting directly to the reporting engine from within Excel, users have a virtually unlimited amount of enterprise information available that can be modeled in whatever way is necessary to solve emerging business problems – without having to learn a new tool. Accessing live enterprise data, users can build ad hoc spreadsheets in such a manner that they are automatically refreshed with updated data every time the file is opened. Or, alternatively, the data can remain fixed snapshots in time depending on their needs. Users can also combine multiple reports from various sources into a single worksheet and create new queries. Information Builders’ WebFOCUS Quick Data, an Excel add-in file, delivers corporate data to Excel users – without forcing them to leave the familiar, local Excel environment. An Excel add-in file should be built on universally understood Excel and browser paradigms, so that usage is self evident. Unlike other Excel add-in files on the market, Quick Data’s is launched from the familiar environment of the Excel pull-down menus and presents an intuitive front end, which means that no training is required. As long as the user is comfortable with Excel and a Web browser, Quick Data will take only moments to learn. By giving Excel users direct access to enterprise data, reports are refreshed with the most up-to-date information each time the report is opened. 11 Information Builders Linking the corporate data to the spreadsheet is only the first challenge of an ad hoc Excel add-on. Once linked, the data must be easy to manipulate and the spreadsheet must be easy to maintain. Fully integrated with Excel Query, Quick Data creates named ranges automatically, which is essential for referencing the query throughout interconnected clusters of departmental spreadsheets. Quick Data also outputs computations and totals as native Excel formulas so that spreadsheet maintenance is facilitated. And of course, query results are styled for visual impact and to integrate with existing corporate standards. In these ways, Quick Data complements the WebFOCUS developer tools, which can be used to generate PiviotTables, burst data into multiple worksheets within the workbook, and refresh data in a server-based Excel application or template. Excel and the Enterprise Built on the software-as-a-service (SaaS) principle, WebFOCUS Quick Data is easier to maintain than other vendors’ add-ins files for Excel. Since it is built as a single local file, once Quick Data is installed, it taps into server-side WebFOCUS functionality. Instead of dealing with hundreds or thousands of upgrades to every desktop in the enterprise, cumulative patches are applied once to the server. Installation on the client side is trivial. Once the add-in is up and running, it requires no support from IT departments. Ad hoc Excel queries raise a red flag for corporate data security. Quick Data queries operate within the domain of pre-existing data security rules on the server and they also comply with local Excel’s data-privacy features. Since users build their reports directly within Excel, they can lock all or selected cells populated by WebFOCUS.They can also password protect the entire worksheet. This feature ensures that the spreadsheet author and anyone else authorized who opens the spreadsheet gets the most up-to-date enterprise information. Servicing the Non-Expert Excel User A boost for the non-expert Excel user is a structured ad hoc application that can generate sophisticated spreadsheets with guided user preferences. Such an application has a series of parameter selection screens that are front-ends for appropriate corporate data stores. All characteristics of a target Excel spreadsheet are defined , according to user preference, via the parameter selection screens. Which database fields and calculated fields are included, what are the summarization rules of the report, the sort criteria, the formatting, whether to include PivotTables, and which cascading stylesheet are all criteria picked by users from menus. 12 Controlling Excel Chaos With Business Intelligence Corporate Data Inventory Forms A A A B C B M C M M B M C M D E M F M D M E M F M M D E M F M M M M M Sales Parameters: Sort Filter Aggregation Styling Orders Figure 8: Answering the ad hoc question is handled with a nightly parameterized application that formats customized spreadsheet output. Figure 9: Detail of a parameterized form and the report it generates. 13 Information Builders For example, an insurance company historically computed health insurance rates based on historic claims, population age, and number of dependents, could now add salary to the rate calculation. If an analysts want to model the effect of the new calculation on profitability of the contract, she can multi-select salary, along with the other rate calculation factors, and derive a new spreadsheet with factors including individual or aggregated salaries. This spreadsheet could then be manipulated off-line in various what-if scenarios but the foundation data is enterprise-certified. 14 Controlling Excel Chaos With Business Intelligence Conclusion Enterprises can take control of the burgeoning number of unsanctioned spreadsheets from dubious source by adopting a policy of centralized master spreadsheet generation as well as giving Excel users direct access to enterprise data sources from within the Excel environment. Excel is a powerful and ubiquitous tool that can make a business analyst self sufficient, but it lacks strong audit and error-checking capabilities. However, WebFOCUS Quick Data and master spreadsheets drawn from the company’s primary operational and warehoused data sources can provide an audit trail back to elemental transactions. WebFOCUS creates fully summarized, organized, and styled Excel spreadsheets with complex formulas already in place, lowering the potential for keystroke and logic error. WebFOCUSgenerated spreadsheets can be pushed out to business analysts in e-mail or staged on a central server where analysts fetch target data by hitching their own linked spreadsheets to the master corporate spreadsheet. Furthermore, on the corporate Excel form, analysts can screen, sort, and summarize samples of data to derive spreadsheet answers to ad hoc questions. With a little analysis and the right WebFOCUS business intelligence tools, you can finally have a corporate Excel spreadsheet strategy that works. 15 Information Builders Sales and Consulting Offices North America United States I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I Australia Information Builders Pty. Ltd. 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