Current economic conditions are putting extraordinary pressure on capital markets. The economic crisis is eroding investor confidence and leading to increasingly stringent regulation and reporting requirements. In turn, those changes are forcing financial firms to become more transparent, manage risk more effectively, and rebuild client trust-all while keeping costs low and continuing to provide strategic and highly customized securities and investment products.
Excel Services, a new technology that is part of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, offers companies throughout the capital markets industry an innovative and low-cost way to address these challenges.
Excel Services extends the capabilities of Microsoft Office Excel 2007 by transforming the familiar desktop tool into an easy-to-use, enterprise-level business application.
The application provides:
Centralized spreadsheet storage and authorization to increase data security and manageability and improve version control.
A server-based calculation service for more robust, efficient, and trustworthy computations.
A user-friendly, Web-based interface for maximum ease of use.
The ability to scale Excel spreadsheets across diverse user groups throughout an organization.
The capacity to extend the use of Excel in the desktop as a business intelligence tool to mine centrally hosted data.
Office Excel 2007 is already heavily used and highly valued by financial firms worldwide, but its popularity can also become a problem. On one hand, the speed and flexibility of Excel spreadsheets have helped financial firms make faster calculations and better decisions, quickly transform ideas into action, and increase profitability and market share. On the other hand, the uncontrolled proliferation of spreadsheets at many companies has created financial and operational risks as well as potential problems with data security and regulatory compliance.
Spreadsheets created on individual desktops can be changed at will and e-mailed across an organization or to external clients, where they can be changed and forwarded again. This often results in multiple versions, all slightly different, many with outdated information that may be inadvertently shared with customers or used as the basis for bad decisions. With Excel Services, spreadsheets can be uploaded to the server. Access and privileges can be limited only to those employees who are authorized to make changes to the shared spreadsheet.
This server-based process both protects the accuracy and integrity of spreadsheet data and calculations and reduces the likelihood that employees will keep sensitive or mission-critical spreadsheets on their personal computers. Customers and partners can be authorized to access specific sections of a spreadsheet through a Web browser and blocked from seeing other sections, which prevents accidental disclosure of sensitive business information or confidential data. As a result, security is enhanced, financial and operational risks are lowered, and regulatory compliance is made easier.
Central control works better for employees, too. With Excel Services, worksheets are available throughout the organization, and employees can apply business processes to them as needed. At the same time, employees have the assurance of knowing they are dealing with a single version of the truth and that the data is safer and more secure than it was when spreadsheets were stored on individuals' laptop and desktop computers.
Office Excel 2007 can also be combined with Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 and HPC Server 2008 to meet the high-performance, supercomputing processing requirements of the securities and capital markets industry-from faster calculations and more efficient financial analysis to increased job reliability and enhanced spreadsheet scalability. Combining Office Excel 2007 with high-performance computing also gives financial firms the ability to process and analyze large amounts of data very quickly so they can test various "what if" customer scenarios.
Among the biggest benefits of Excel Services for enterprise firms in the capital markets industry are low development costs, high return on investment, and the ability of Office Excel 2007 to work well with existing technology systems. Because Excel Services empowers business users to create robust solutions without developer involvement, as well as provides multiple ways for developers to manipulate and reuse business logic and reports created by business experts, financial firms gain robust, extensible, and scalable applications with enhanced security while saving time and money. In addition, the open file format standard in Office Excel 2007 allows financial firms not only to take full advantage of their own legacy technology systems, but also to exchange data with external customers and partners more easily.