On Mon, Nov 27, 2017 at 9:37 AM, Udhay Shankar N <ud...@pobox.com> wrote:
> Seems like an expected outcome, as general purpose tool give way to > specialised little tools that can be in the cloud somewhere. > > I'd be interested in the thoughts of finance professionals (and others who > depend on manipulating lots of numerical data). > > Excel is a huge pain point for financial services companies; datasets are unwieldy and as teams change, it is near impossible to manage or track all the macros that are running in an excel sheet and all the model versions and changes. I'm involved with a company called Sheetkraft that creates cloud based tools to move financial services companies off excel. They currently work with research and modeling teams, as well as with mutual funds for NAV calcs etc. While it makes logical sense, the biggest roadblock for sales and adoption is set behaviours. Traders and modelling teams are comfortable manipulating excel data and easiest way to access external data even today is the excel add-ins that all data providers (bloomberg, thomson reuters, etc) have built. To me, it's only a matter of time where complex models have to move away from excel. There is also more regulation around tracking trading models post the credit crisis that is prompting this move.
