Spreadsheet Challenges in Energy, Oil & Gas Markets

Spreadsheets are powerful and flexible reporting tools used ubiquitously the energy, oil and gas markets within corporate finance and accounting, and energy trading and distribution operations across the globe. Traders rely on spreadsheets to analyze market data, and track and execute trades, and in the back office critical spreadsheets are used for preparing financial statements, reconciliations, closing the books, budgeting, forecasting, revenue recognition, billing, and P&L reporting.

Despite their power, flexibility and ubiquity, many energy, and oil & gas companies have failed to apply the proper safeguards and controls to critical spreadsheets, resulting in errors, financial restatements, lost earnings, fraud, non-compliance with regulatory mandates, and shattered shareholder confidence. Due to the criticality and inherent complexity of these spreadsheets, organizations must effectively mitigate spreadsheet risk while ensuring compliance with ever-changing regulatory mandates, including SOX 404, Bill 198, and FRCP Rule 26.

Business Mandates Mission critical spreadsheets, Access databases and other end-user computing (EUC) applications should be managed with the highest level of integrity and trust throughout their lifecycle. This requires establishing a spreadsheet control environment that incorporates: spreadsheet security, access control, segregation of duties and responsibilities, documentation, input control, data integrity, logic inspection, analytics, version control, and change control. These are the critical technology requirements recommended by leading tax and audit firms for establishing effective spreadsheet governance - all of which can be automated by the Prodiance Enterprise Spreadsheet Manager (ESM) system.

Mitigating Spreadsheet Risk With the Prodiance ESM system, energy, and oil & gas firms can: