Blog | Coherent

Insights for Finance: A Clearer Way to Understand Your Spreadsheet Estate

Written by Coherent Blog | Nov 21, 2025 5:10:06 PM

Finance teams today rely on Excel for planning, reporting, actuarial inputs, reconciliations, and critical business processes. Over years, this naturally creates a sprawling Excel estate — thousands of files, versions, links, and logic paths spread across teams, drives, and SharePoint sites.

But for most organizations, this estate remains a black box:

  • Which spreadsheets matter most?

  • Which ones contain business-critical logic?

  • Which ones introduce operational risk?

  • Which models are duplicates, outdated, or inconsistent?

  • How does data flow between files?

These questions are at the heart of every Finance modernization effort — FP&A automation, forecasting transformation, system upgrades, AI initiatives, and more.

Historically, uncovering these answers required weeks or months of manual discovery, walkthroughs, interviews, and spreadsheet-by-spreadsheet investigation — often supported by internal teams and external partners.

Today, there’s a new approach.

Meet Insights for Finance

Insights is Coherent’s new analysis engine designed specifically for Finance teams and the complex spreadsheet environments they manage.

Unlike general-purpose AI tools, Insights is purpose-built for:

  • Systematic Excel discovery at enterprise scale

  • Identifying patterns, duplication, lineage, and risk across thousands of files

  • Surfacing critical Finance logic, not just describing a single spreadsheet

  • Keeping all data local on your machine for maximum security

  • Supporting both internal teams and external consultants with fast, accurate analysis

With Insights, organizations can complete a full Excel estate assessment — the foundation of any transformation — in a matter of days, not months(or even years.)

This accelerates the work of your internal teams and your trusted consulting partners by giving everyone the clarity they need from day one.

Watch How Finance Teams Can Move Faster

How Insights Works

Insights scans any folder, SharePoint library, or shared drive and automatically identifies:

1. Groups & Patterns Across Thousands of Files

Spot clusters of similar spreadsheets used across Finance — often revealing opportunities for standardization or modernization.

2. Potential Risk Areas

Locate sensitive data, complex formulas, hidden sheets, VBA, broken links, and inconsistencies instantly.

3. Spreadsheet Lineage & Dependencies

Understand how files connect to each other, where upstream inputs are coming from, and where downstream outputs are used.

4. Complexity & Priority Maps

Insights scores each file by complexity, stability, and significance — helping Finance prioritize where to modernize first.

5. Local-First, Secure-by-Design Analysis

All processing happens directly on the user’s device. No spreadsheet ever leaves your environment. Nothing is stored, learned, or retained.

Why Finance Teams Are Adopting Insights

A clearer starting point for modernization

Before automation or AI can begin, Finance must understand their current ecosystem. Insights delivers that foundation instantly.

A complement to your partners — not a replacement

Consulting partners use Insights to accelerate their work, validate assumptions faster, and deliver higher-quality transformation outcomes.

Purpose-built for Excel-heavy organizations

Unlike general AI tools, Insights understands spreadsheets deeply, structurally, and at scale.

Secure, private, and ready on day one

Since Insights runs locally, teams can begin analysis immediately — no data movement, no integrations, no setup barriers.

Faster insight, better decisions

What used to take months of discovery can now be done in days, giving Finance the clarity to act sooner.

What is Coherent Insights?

Coherent Insights is more than an inventory. It’s a new way to see your spreadsheets as an enterprise system.

By instantly scanning your entire Excel estate, Insights helps you:

  • Discover & catalog – Automatically surface files across teams in a live, searchable inventory.
  • Assess risks & dependencies – Detect errors, broken links, and compliance gaps before they escalate, giving risk and compliance teams defensible audit trails.
  • Automate documentation – Generate instant analysis and audit-ready reporting in minutes, so finance and actuarial teams can validate models before they impact reporting or pricing.
  • Scale transformation – Identify the models ready to modernize, helping IT and transformation leaders gain visibility into EUCs before migrations.

With Insights, every team sees a clearer picture of the spreadsheets they rely on—what’s safe, what’s risky, and what’s ready for change.

Want Your Finance Team to See Insights?

If you're reading this from another part of your organization — actuarial, underwriting, data, operations, or transformation — consider forwarding this to your Finance partners.

A brief conversation or demo can help them see their spreadsheet ecosystem clearly for the first time — and modernize with confidence.