CIMCON EUC Insight

CIMCON’s EUC Insight line of products provide enterprise-level spreadsheet and EUC governance and risk management. It contains three primary modules: EUC Insight Discovery, EUC Insight Inventory, and EUC Insight Change Management, as seen in Figure 1. The purpose of each module is self-explanatory. Taken as a whole, EUC Insight is a broad, integrated, and singular platform that covers the entire EUC and model risk management lifecycle.

Figure 1 – EUC Insight core modules and XLAudit

EUC Insight is enterprise-ready, scalable, and configurable. Documentation, validation, and testing functionality is included. Multi-lingual support is provided. It is available through cloud, on-prem, or hybrid deployments, and is compatible with the most popular cloud repositories. It also provides support for, among other things, Google Sheets and Alteryx. In fact, it has a partnership with the latter. Other partners include RPA (Robotic Process Automation) vendors like UiPath, and cloud vendors like Box. Integration support stretches to unpartnered products, such as IBM OpenPages.

It is also worth mentioning that CIMCON’s EUC products do not begin and end with EUC Insight. For instance, it also provides XLAudit, an Excel tool that offers various error analysis capabilities to the end user. Over 50 types of analysis are built-in, covering both data and model validation, allowing you to ensure the accuracy and integrity of your data and the efficacy of your spreadsheet logic alike.

The core capabilities of EUC Insight are provided by its three primary modules: Discovery, Inventory, and Change Management. Note that all three of these modules, as well as EUC Insight in general, are not restricted to handling spreadsheets. Rather, they are compatible with many different types of EUC assets, including Python, R, SAS and SQL scripts, Access databases, and more.

EUC Insight Discovery’s primary function is to search through your enterprise systems and detect the EUC models that are located therein. Models are identified via landscape analysis, providing a holistic understanding of your EUC assets as a whole, before more detailed scans can be run on targeted files. Duplicate assets are detected and grouped together automatically. Errors, broken links, and hidden information inside each spreadsheet model are also detected automatically, and broken links can even be automatically remediated. Moreover, code quality assessments are available for Python and R models in order to detect any errors therein, such as missing variables.

Automated risk assessment and identification is available. The risk algorithm used is configurable, and is based around factors like complexity, materiality, and so on. These factors are either detected automatically or are determined by a ‘risk and criticality’ self-assessment, filled in by the user. You can also create custom metadata forms to capture any additional user inputs that are required. Various kinds of sensitive data can be detected, and for spreadsheets this includes sensitive information stored in code or as part of macros. Assets are automatically partitioned into high, medium and low risk, and alerting functionality is available.

In addition, Discovery can generate an enterprise lineage map of your EUC assets using the company’s EUCLink technology. This displays how those assets relate to each other and to your various data sources.

EUC Insight Inventory creates and maintains an inventory of your models, with the intention that once you’ve found them using Discovery you can manage and govern them using Inventory. Said inventory is automatically updated in close to real time, and features browser-based access, configurable workflows via a workflow designer, and role-based permissions and access management.

Finally, EUC Insight Change Managements provide real-time, continuous change monitoring for your EUC assets without unduly impacting your end users. Controls are provided in addition to passive monitoring, and individual cells can be flagged as key risk indicators and monitored specifically. Version and access control, as well as other security features, are available, and review/approval processes can be implemented and automated via the same workflow designer mentioned above.

Change Management also features a “smart” audit trail that integrates with various third-party solutions (for business intelligence, RPA, analytics, or what have you). This audit trail automatically detects and alerts high risk changes, where what exactly qualifies as “high risk” is configurable. Behavioural analysis of your audit trails is also provided, and audit trails are filtered to generate personalised reports at regular intervals. The product also comes with over 30 pre-configured reports for documenting compliance with various regulations and policies.

CIMCON has been in the EUC governance game for a long time, and it shows in its extensive client base and its mature, comprehensive product suite. This makes it very appealing, particularly for large enterprise deployments. All three of EUC Insight’s primary modules are highly effective at their particular purpose, and together they form a broad solution for governing your EUC assets. This strength is reinforced by the company’s various other products – such as XLAudit – that provide additional capabilities.

However, there are some (small) areas where the product seems to fall back on manual user interaction in lieu of full automation. For example, it uses user-driven self-assessment to determine risk and criticality. We are not generally a fan of this. That said, these manual interactions are leveraged alongside automated systems, meaning that rather than being used as a replacement for automation that ought to be there, they instead act as a way for your users to modify the automation that is there as and when needed. This is much more palatable – you might even consider it a strength.

The Bottom Line

EUC Insight is a mature, well-developed EUC governance and risk management solution. Needless to say, we recommend it.