Spreadsheet risk in business

This is a report published by Deloitte about the use of spreadsheets in business and the balance between risks and benefits this brings. It makes the point that spreadsheets are really business applications, where the end user is the owner, developer, programmer, tester and user. With no intrinsic audit trail, and with most users not being trained in structure development and testing techniques, this presents a risk of critical business tools containing errors. In their words "spreadsheet applications can be an incubator for compounding issues leading to an avalanche of misinformation". The SolveXia service is design to mitigate these issues - and overlay the audit and control disciplines that will allow spreadsheet applications to play such a central role in business, without many of the risks discussed in this report.

You can find the complete article at Gigaom