Financial analyst here (and front end dev geek / enthusiast). It’s been interesting to see a number of recent HN articles related to Excel. I work for a Global 500 manufacturing company and can assure that Excel supports a large number of business processes and decisions.
Raw data is often stored in proprietary OLAP data stores which are provide a single version of the “truth”. The financial data is retrieved through the vendor’s Excel add-ins. Analysts can then use Excel’s basic functionality to transform and enrich the data and finally output it in a format suitable to be presented to decision makers.
Having a decent knowledge of web technologies, I’m often frustrated not to have a shiny web app that will automagically show the data in stunning tables and graphs (e.g. d3.js bliss). For me, the main reason we don’t see proper “developer made” applications in large corporations is that they do not allow for quick and fast iteration and adaptations. Here is a very typical situation in my job : A manager bursts into my office to ask the following : “Hey, I know we usually compare our XYZ monthly performance to our prior year performance and to our last forecast. Could you compare add in a comparison between the year end run rate and forecast ? Oh, and could you also a express XYZ as a percentage of ABC, it could be insightful. Thanks ! ... don’t work too late.”
After a couple of Excel ninja moves : job done, manager happy, business decisions made. If the data is wrong, I'm responsible, not the mistyped Excel formulae.
"... I’m often frustrated not to have a shiny web app that will automagically show the data in stunning tables and graphs (e.g. d3.js bliss). " : Are you looking for a web interface for manipulating OLAP data? (something like http://www.tableausoftware.com/olap)?
Raw data is often stored in proprietary OLAP data stores which are provide a single version of the “truth”. The financial data is retrieved through the vendor’s Excel add-ins. Analysts can then use Excel’s basic functionality to transform and enrich the data and finally output it in a format suitable to be presented to decision makers.
Having a decent knowledge of web technologies, I’m often frustrated not to have a shiny web app that will automagically show the data in stunning tables and graphs (e.g. d3.js bliss). For me, the main reason we don’t see proper “developer made” applications in large corporations is that they do not allow for quick and fast iteration and adaptations. Here is a very typical situation in my job : A manager bursts into my office to ask the following : “Hey, I know we usually compare our XYZ monthly performance to our prior year performance and to our last forecast. Could you compare add in a comparison between the year end run rate and forecast ? Oh, and could you also a express XYZ as a percentage of ABC, it could be insightful. Thanks ! ... don’t work too late.”
After a couple of Excel ninja moves : job done, manager happy, business decisions made. If the data is wrong, I'm responsible, not the mistyped Excel formulae.