Thanks to Dick Kusleika‘s article on EuSpRIG 2007 and after browsing the latter site a bit, I located a couple interesting papers I want to share here. These are full of good high-level tips related to spreadshet design:
Archive for June, 2007
Spreadsheet design best practice
June 22, 2007MDX tips from one of the masters
June 22, 2007Chris Webb shared several valuable tips recently that I want to post here for future reference:
- Using Linear Regression to Calculate Growth
- Modelling Goals and Thresholds in Measure Groups
- An MDX Challenge: Debtor Days
- Calculating Seasonally-Adjusted Values in MDX
Once more, I’m unfortunately only referencing someone else’s content but this is too good to pass up.
Filling the gap between IT and Finance
June 8, 2007A recent post at Accounting Mechanics suggests accountants should do anything necessary to fill the gap between Finance and IT. While I fully agree accountants are in a better position than IT specialists to provide useful management information, I can think of a few issues with that positioning, though:
- Old-school finance people might see you too much like an IT resource
- IT will most definitely see you as competition;-)
- The added value is obvious once you’re part of an organization and start to deliver results, but it’s difficult to “sell” that particular skill set without sounding too much like “an IT guy”
- You run the risk of ending up maintaining systems instead of using them to answer the very questions you built them to find answers to in the first place
Still, there seems to be quite a few of us out there tackling those issues and getting involved with a whole set of typically IT-only technologies. Feel free to let me know of any experience you wish to share in the comments.
