W: www.tkp.co.uk
E: info@tkp.co.uk
T: +44 0845 241 2221
ClusterSeven
Home |
Forums |
Knowledge Assets |
Events |
Members
Community Overview
Corporate Overview
ClusterSeven is a global software company that helps financial institutions achieve success in end user computing through controlled agility. Our pioneering technology fosters innovation in front, middle and back office processes while bringing integrity to gaps in the information supply chain where business critical data is held in spreadsheets and Microsoft Access databases. Clients include global investment banks, asset managers, hedge funds and insurance companies.
ClusterSeven technology monitors, analyzes and audits all activity and data changes generated at a cellular level during the use of Excel spreadsheets within complex and regulated business reporting processes. Furthermore, ClusterSeven provides the business with a central SQL Server database full of temporal history by user, by Excel activity type on each managed file, with active alerts and complete reports to maintain business integrity.
ClusterSeven’s Enterprise Spreadsheet Management software offers IT, business and compliance managers rapid and centralized business intelligence and reduced risk in all areas where business-critical operations are supported by spreadsheets.
Key Business Challenges
Financial institutions are driven by innovation. They compete to develop, offer and use new financial products. The terms financial engineering and rocket science are part of the financial industry lexicon. Often new financial products (structured products, alternative investments strategies, hedge funds, etc.) are developed and deployed using Excel. It is unrivaled in streamlining the financial concept to product development cycle. But innovation carries responsibility. Regulators and auditors require increasing levels of transparency, documentation and audit trails for all data that has a material impact on company financials. Therefore the innovators, who create new financial products using adaptive technology like Excel, must adhere to increasingly complex regulatory guidelines.
Key Benefits
ClusterSeven provides a wide range of benefits to support both innovation and control. We leverage the business strengths of Excel while providing both passive and active controls to mitigate risk. The benefits of our solution includes faster time to market, reduced operational risk, robust SQL database integrity, regulatory compliance, reduced costs, and new business insight.
Cost-efficient compliance
- Replace repetitive, costly and error-prone manual controls
- Provide an easily accessible audit capability to reduce the cost of audit
- Establish the required segregation of duties without stalling the business
- Establish a control framework based on exception reports and alerts so that effort need only be focussed on non-standard issues.
- Deliver compliance documentation automatically for reduced costs
Reducing Risk
- Maintain integrity of spreadsheets
- Rapidly identify common errors and bad practice
- Integrate with central applications to enable straight-through processing
- Improved resilience against fraud
- Retain the customized business logic and the intellectual property of the business
Increased Business Opportunity
- Observe and identify new business trends faster
- Approve new products more quickly
- Maintain speed, flexibility and cost-effectiveness of Excel in a managed environment
Reduced costs
- Lower capital adequacy requirements
- Reduced administration overhead
- Locate potentially costly errors faster
- Reduce exposure from broken workflow with external parties (e.g. failed trades)
- Optimize timing for migration of spreadsheet functionality into central applications
- Reduce IT costs for spreadsheet support
Key Features
ClusterSeven is a non-invasive solution to monitor, analyze and validate all activity and data changes generated at a cellular level during the use of Excel within business-critical processes. This capability is delivered as a practical solution through a range of innovative features:
- Track changes at a cell level to content and value
- Track changes to VBA code in macros
- A clear visual display of user interaction with spreadsheets over time
- Delivery of alerts and exception reports on a wide variety of value and structural changes
- Rapid drill down to integrity breaks
- Dashboard overview of spreadsheet integrity
- Two-level integrated sign-off process for individual changes and alerts
- Display and graph complete cell history over time
- Define and monitor any cell value as being a Key Performance Indicator
- Assign and demonstrate ownership, documents and tasks to a spreadsheet
- Directly integrate validated information with downstream systems
- Discover and manage linked spreadsheet systems
- Enable rapid rollback to previous versions
Technology framework
The ClusterSeven solution may be integrated with the 2007 Microsoft Office System as shown below, and supports earlier versions of Excel from 97 onwards.
ClusterSeven does not require any component to be installed on the client machines – it is neither an Excel add-in nor does it place any code (e.g. VBA) in the workbook. This avoids any impact on client performance and also ensures that there are no compatibility issues if users wish to utilize the new server-side functionality available in Office Excel 2007. This means that ClusterSeven is not impacted by the most recent Excel file format changes.
ClusterSeven may be integrated with existing infrastructure, such as Active Directory and SharePoint, to increase the ROI of previous investments. Additionally, with the advances in Office SharePoint Server 2007, a more efficient workflow as well as a highly adaptable and future-proofed environment for spreadsheet compliance will be achieved.
The ClusterSeven solution comprises a suite of components built in 100% Microsoft technologies as described below:
The power of combining ClusterSeven with Office Excel Services 2007 is illustrated below. Here it may be seen how Office SharePoint Server provides the document level protection, while Office Excel 2007 Services provides the means for selective publication. ClusterSeven operates at the heart of this structure recording the most granular changes that have been performed by authorised users.
The power of ClusterSeven combined with Office Excel Services 2007
New York City
140 Broadway – 46th Floor
New York, New York 10005
USA
Phone: +1.212.858-7790
Fax: +1.212.858-7750
London
10 Fashion Street
London E1 6PZ
United Kingdom
Phone: +44.207.426.1000
Fax: +44.207.092.9013
|
