Prodiance eDiscovery:
Automating Discovery & Risk Assessment for Critical Spreadsheets & EUCs
Spreadsheets, Access databases and other end-user computing (EUC) applications are inherently difficult to manage and control because they are user-driven, stored on disparate servers and employee desktops, and outside the control of IT departments. Organizations today may have thousands of EUCs scattered across their IT infrastructure, yet no idea of who’s using what version, which files are mission critical, or what their risk levels are. Leading tax and audit firms recommend a formal process to discover, inventory, and assess the risk of spreadsheets and EUCs as the first and most critical step to controlling them. Yet manual discovery, inventory management and risk assessment processes have proven time and resource intensive, not inclusive of linked files, and have often led to outdated and inconsistent results
Prodiance eDiscovery is powerful application that automates the ongoing discovery, inventory management, and risk assessment process for mission critical spreadsheets, Access databases and other EUCs while promoting transparency and improved control.
Key Features & Capabilities
- Automates initial and ongoing discovery and inventory management for mission critical spreadsheets, Access databases and other EUCs.
- Categorizes spreadsheets, Access databases and EUCs according to risk level.
- Evaluates risk level based on built-in materiality and complexity criteria, or based on custom rules.
- Evaluates all EUCs against corporate policies and alerts on any policy violations.
- Robust, highly configurable risk criteria, rules and automated workflows to support event the most complex and rigorous corporate governance guidance.
- User defined keys allow all EUC to be tagged with company or industry specific metadata.
- Supports auditor guidance and compliance mandates for spreadsheet control.
- Increases transparency, reduces operational risk, and facilitates fraud prevention and detection.
Automated Risk Assessment Prodiance eDiscovery incorporates a powerful software engine that scans an organization’s network on demand or on a routine basis, and incorporates the discovery results into a master inventory. Once files are inventoried, they are evaluated for risk, errors, policy violations, and optionally incorporated into automated workflows where high risk files are further certified and placed under control of Prodiance Enterprise Risk Manager (ESM). Risk assessment helps organizations categorize spreadsheets, Access databases and EUCs based on flexible, yet highly configurable rules to evaluate materiality, complexity, use and other company specific parameters. The risk assessment is extensive and incorporates a thorough analysis of spreadsheet content, structure, and all data connections (including spreadsheet links, Access database links, queries to external applications, web feeds, text files, etc.). Prodiance eDiscovery incorporates a flexible and powerful rules engine and a template based approach for configuring risk parameters and creating custom rules to satisfy even the most complex and rigorous corporate governance policies.
Many organizations create an inventory at the onset of a new spreadsheet control project, but the problem is ongoing. New spreadsheets are created by end users on a daily basis, making initial inventory lists obsolete as soon as they are published. Prodiance eDiscovery solves this challenge by running scheduled discovery tasks to automatically incorporate new files as they are created and re-assessing risks levels to improve transparency and control.
Policy Violations & Workflow Prodiance eDiscovery incorporates a powerful rules engine to define and enforce corporate governance policies for critical spreadsheets and EUCs. In addition to assigning risk levels, policy checks can be enforced to identify EUCs that violate corporate policies (against fraud, spreadsheet development best practices, etc.). For example, fraud detection policies can be created to find hidden or invisible data and all spreadsheets and EUCs in the inventory can be evaluated to see if they violate the policy. Prodiance eDiscovery incorporates an open architecture enabling post discovery workflows to be initiated. Workflows are configured using a robust graphical interface with drag-and-drop activities.
Best Practices & Proven ROI Prodiance eDiscovery has been developed in collaboration with Big 4 audit firms and professionals with expertise in finance and enterprise risk management. To this end, Prodiance eDiscovery incorporates industry best practices and proven risk frameworks.
With Prodiance eDiscovery, organizations can automate initial and ongoing discovery, inventory management and risk assessment for mission critical spreadsheets, Access databases and other critical EUCs. The bottom line is increased transparency over critical spreadsheets and EUCs, reduced operational risk, improved compliance and sustainable internal controls.
Ready to Take the Next Step? Sign up for an online seminar or contact a Prodiance representative to schedule your personalized product demonstration today!