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Showing posts from October, 2020

Spreadsheets can risky, 16,000 UK residents unaware of COVID exposure!

In my time I've encountered some risky spreadsheets.  Spreadsheets have much user-friendly functionality; a feature that is both a blessing and a curse. Spreadsheets are a blessing that they can be customised rapidly, and spreadsheets are a curse in that they are often used to provide a solution when a better system solution is available.   As a curse, spreadsheets are often built, and utilised, to a breaking-point. A point where functionality is hindered by size or distance. At the breaking-point you need someone to wisely recognises that it is time to retire the spreadsheet. You need that person to identify a way of data transfer to a customised solution. And, you need them to act quickly. The riskiest spreadsheet I've witnessed was a multi-user contract database. It was a contract database that had eight different functional user groups, numbering a total of 110 people, across multiple locations. On analysis of the spreadsheet's deployment there was neither a central ...