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Qtier promises to control to spreadsheet chaos

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26th Jan 2005
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Softworld ZoneUK software house Qtier has created a reporting system that imposes a degree of control over Excel spreadsheets.

Qtier Rapor has been in development for just over 18 months. After "dipping a toe in the water" at the Softworld Accounting & Finance event in October 2004, Qtier is going to the spring event in London to give the product a bigger launch.

The company describes Rapor as a "software framework" built around an Application Designer module and the end user interface, which from the user's point of view is a normal spreadsheet.

As Qtier director Keith Bishop explained it, "We use Excel as the primary means of delivery to endusers - they see everything though Excel."

Drawing on the experience of the company founders, Rapor is based around the recognition that many large organisations build entire systems around spreadsheets. "Where there gaps in ERP, they get filled with spreadsheets," said Bishop. "It starts as a bright idea, then gets rolled out and and becomes a full-time job. Then they find out that spreadsheets don't perform like proper IT systems."

An analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers also alerted the developer to the shortcomings of spreadsheets when it comes to the strictures of the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act. "One of the biggest holes in compliance occurs when business-critical information is held on spreadsheets," said Bishop.

The company has taken the act's requirements and added extra functions and security to ensure that spreadsheet systems put together with its tools will satisfy the SOX audit criteria. "That's a matter of intense interest in the US, and probably more than passing interest in the UK," said Bishop.

Bishop said that Rapor was a development tool that could typically be used by an experienced Excel users - "the ones who would normally do data extract stuff". Instead of consolidating lots of different spreadsheets on a regular basis, the tool kit allows them to build a system that does the consolidation for them.

The source data can be extracted from the underlying database systems and then analysed and presented in spreadsheet reports. Once the desired results have been identified, the data can be written back to the database (subject to security controls) and "the spreadsheet disappears" Bishop explained.

Annual budgets and monthly sales forecasts head the list of applications for Rapor among early adopters, as these are areas where ERP systems tend to be weak, he explained.

Rapor is typical of the growing breed of hybrid Excel tools that combine the familiar spreadsheet interface with back-room structures and controls. Bishop explained why this trend was emerging: "At one level, the flexibility of Excel for financial reporting is brilliant when you need to change things. But finance directors would say they want a rigid reporting structure and don't want people working every weekend to produce the reports."

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