Response to this blog

Hello class,

After doing some research on the importance of spreadsheets and going through the last SP assignment I found an interesting article that talks about how often spreadsheet errors occur. A financial modeling company called F1F9 did their own research and found that close to 88% of spreadsheets have errors in them and 50% of spreadsheets used by large companies have material defects (Bishop, 2013). These spreadsheet mistakes are potentially costing businesses billions of dollars. They made a good point in the article saying that not only time and money are being wasted, but these errors may lead to a company damaging their reputation and jobs being lost (Bishop, 2013). Their solution to this problem would be to create standards for the way financial models are created in spreadsheets. Kenny Whitelaw-Jones, managing director at F1F9 states that “If we can agree on standards around how these models are put together, then it significantly reduces the risk of error” (Bishop, 2013). What do you guys think? Will creating standards for how financial models are created with spreadsheets reduce the amount of errors? I personally think it may help a little, but there will always be some human errors that could be potentially catastrophic for a company.

-Matt K

Bishop, K. (2013, July 30). Spreadsheet blunders costing business billions. Retrieved March 16, 2018, from https://www.cnbc.com/id/100923538