Excel remains one of the most critical—and least understood—systems inside modern organizations.
Across insurance, finance, and advisory firms, spreadsheets power pricing models, financial reconciliations, reporting workflows, and operational decision-making. Over time, these files evolve, branch, and multiply. What starts as a single model becomes hundreds or thousands of variations spread across teams, shared drives, and inboxes.
The challenge isn’t that Excel exists.
The challenge is that most organizations are operating with an unmanaged Excel estate.
When teams set out to “get control of spreadsheets,” the first instinct is often inventory:
Count the files
Identify duplicates
Track locations and owners
While this is a useful first step, it rarely answers the questions that matter most:
Which spreadsheets are actually doing the same thing?
Where did formulas change—and why?
Which files introduce risk through hidden errors, VBA, or sensitive data?
Which models should be governed, modernized, or retired?
Those answers don’t live in filenames or folder structures. They live inside the workbook.
To truly understand an Excel estate, you have to treat spreadsheets less like documents and more like codebases.
That means looking at:
Sheet structures
Formula patterns and dependencies
Tables and data flows
VBA modules and macros
Authorship, edits, and version lineage
This deeper analysis reveals something most teams intuitively know but struggle to prove:
many spreadsheets are not unique—they are variants of a small number of underlying models.
One of the most powerful ways to make sense of large spreadsheet estates is clustering.
Rather than reviewing files one by one, related workbooks can be grouped automatically based on:
Naming conventions and keywords
Formula fingerprints
Table structures
Shared logic and patterns
For example, what initially appears as “50 pricing spreadsheets” often resolves into:
A core pricing model
Several closely related variants
A handful of outliers that diverged over time
This shift—from thousands of individual files to a manageable set of model groups—fundamentally changes how teams scope remediation, governance, and modernization.
Spreadsheets evolve organically. They are copied, modified, emailed, and re-used—often without formal version control.
Over time, this leads to:
Silent formula changes
Inconsistent table ranges
Branching logic paths
Unclear ownership and accountability
By reconstructing lineage across versions, teams can see:
Where a model originated
When and where it diverged
Which versions share common ancestry
Which changes were isolated vs. widely propagated
This context is invaluable during audits, transformations, or acquisitions—especially when organizations need to understand not just what a model does, but how it got there.
Many spreadsheet risks are not obvious during day-to-day use. They sit quietly until they surface as material issues.
Common examples include:
Errors masked by broad IFERROR usage
Range inconsistencies that grow silently over time
Unmanaged or duplicated VBA macros
Hard-coded credentials embedded in code
Files containing sensitive or regulated data
When spreadsheet internals are analyzed systematically, these risks can be identified early—before they reach production processes, regulatory scrutiny, or financial reporting.
Understanding an Excel estate is not the end goal. It’s the starting point.
Once spreadsheets are clustered, analyzed, and prioritized, teams can make informed decisions:
Some models should remain in Excel—but with governance, version control, and auditability
Others should be modernized into APIs and integrated into enterprise systems
Many can be rationalized, consolidated, or retired entirely
The key is that not every spreadsheet needs the same treatment. Insight enables choice.
Excel continues to be one of the most powerful front-ends for complex business logic. The problem isn’t Excel itself. It’s operating without visibility, structure, or control at scale.
By treating spreadsheets as logic assets—rather than just files—organizations can move from reactive cleanup to intentional management.
And that’s when Excel stops being a liability and starts becoming an asset again.
See the Platform in Action
If Excel plays a critical role in how your organization prices risk, closes the books, or makes decisions, the first step isn’t replacement—it’s understanding.