Spreadsheet Governance
Date:
By: Philip Howard
Classification: Spotlight
You may use spreadsheets for a variety of
purposes, and there are a variety of reasons
for wanting to manage those spreadsheets in
a coherent way. For example, you may wish
to improve efficiency, enable collaboration
or automate reconciliations, or you may be
concerned with fraud, errors, compliance
and risk management. While spreadsheet
management solutions address all of these
areas it is with this last group that we are
concerned in this paper: spreadsheet governance.
This will apply whenever your uses
of spreadsheets have any corporate implications,
such as using them to prepare financial
accounts, or pricing models, or financial or
trading models, or for holding personal information,
or employing them in any way to
support significant decision making. If you
use spreadsheets in any of these ways then
you need to read this paper. You particularly
need to read this paper if you are subject to
Sarbanes-Oxley or J-SOX or any similar regulations,
or if you are subject to risk management
in the banking sector or (in the future)
in insurance.