Spreadland

[admin]

Are those areas in an organisation where analysis and reporting is done directly in the business by using Microsoft Excel, Access or SAS. People use these tools to create solutions that can be delivered quickly (without formal IT involvement), often without a budget, using tools at already available and that solve a pressing business problem. They are also known as ‘shadow systems’. We use them because they let us quickly respond to market dynamics, government regulation and new business initiatives.

Business decisions cannot be placed on hold while IT addresses its backlog of change requests from the rest of the organisation, building new data feeds, and running projects, as well as keeping the data warehouse(s) up-to-date. So business users take matters into their own hands.

So Spreadland delivers vital data to the business. What can be wrong with that? The downside for the business is that:

• They have to spend time and money developing and maintaining the solution. Normally not a core capability and something IT does. As the solution grows and evolves, more time and energy is consumed to keep it working.
• Data consistency and integrity suffer as the enterprise BI applications will be reporting different numbers. This often happens even if you use the data warehouse as the source of data because data marts and reports may include business rules your solution does not (and visa-versa).
• They can be risky as they are often the brainchild of one person and are poorly documented. What happens if that person leaves the company?
• When it breaks, IT is often unavailable to support you.