Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International (MUSI) has reduced operational risk and improved compliance management in the product control department of its London office with the deployment of spreadsheet management software. “We were experiencing vast growth in product and at the same time like most major organizations, we have large numbers of business-critical spreadsheets throughout the entire enterprise,” says Don Simpson, managing director in charge of operations and technology at MUSI. “It is vital for our business to keep our spreadsheets but facilitate use in a controlled manner.”
    
Simpson says the investment management firm wanted to reduce the time it spent trying to manage and maintain spreadsheets in the product control department without “locking” them down or reducing their effectiveness. MUSI’s London office contacted Microsoft in the US and was directed toward ClusterSeven, which produces enterprise spreadsheet management software for managing, analyzing and auditing Excel spreadsheets.
    
The investment bank piloted the software on spreadsheets used for structured trade pricing within the product control area of the finance department. The deployment was rapid. After 20 days of consultation to identify the critical spreadsheets, it took just five weeks and a team of two to actually implement the solution, which went live last October.
    
“ClusterSeven provided the catalyst for us to consolidate our spreadsheets and manage them properly just like any other business application,” says Simpson.
    
ClusterSeven passively monitors every nominated spreadsheet in the enterprise, delivering a full audit trail on every cell, so MUSI can promote internal best practices in spreadsheet management and reduce operational risk. By tracking every amendment, ClusterSeven enables MUSI to meet the most stringent interpretations of regulatory initiatives on spreadsheet compliance such as SOX and Financial Services Authority (FSA) regulations efficiently without inhibiting business flexibility. Validated spreadsheet data is now available for use by other central systems without the need for further manual processes.

ClusterSeven functionality also clearly separates the roles of the business users and risk managers, a key requirement for most compliance legislations.

“We now have a fully-automated and systematic set of business controls and processes that encourage our spirit of innovation while ensuring best practice in terms of operational risk and FSA compliance,” says Simpson. “Important business spreadsheets can be identified, managed and then prioritized for migration into our central applications.”
    
Future plans involve rolling out ClusterSeven’s technology in other areas of the company such as risk and regulation reporting, operations and the front-office in other international locations including Japan.