Spreadsheets are a wild card in the master-data management equation.

On the one hand, spreadsheets are one of the primary client applications for viewing and working with master reference data from corporate data warehouses. On the other hand, they make it far too easy for users to ignore or flout the MDM controls governing data warehouse operations. Users often populate Excel spreadsheets with information that is outdated, inconsistent and full of errors, and with formulas that deviate significantly from company-approved analytical models.

Spreadsheet governance should be a core component of every organization's MDM and regulatory-compliance strategies. To ensure all users are working from a common set of master data and analytical models, a company should place its spreadsheets under strict MDM version, change and access controls. For compliance purposes, organizations must be able to determine which spreadsheet version a given user relied on at a particular time when taking a specific action. Ideally, desktop spreadsheets should be populated with current, sanctioned data from corporate-sanctioned data warehouses and other official repositories.

In the past few years, the range of commercial spreadsheet-governance tools has grown steadily, though the niche is still far from mature. Vendors in this emerging market include established business intelligence vendors, such as Actuate, and compliance-focused vendors, such as ClusterSeven, Compassoft, Mobius Management Systems and Prodiance.